A Supernatural Ride
by nitefang
Summary: When the Winchesters meet a young girl with a dark history, a bleak future, and a pair of badass black and red wings, science and the supernatural collide in a flurry of demons, castles, and visions.
1. Birds and Impalas

**1  
**_**Birds and Impalas**_

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

"…and when I asked her out, chick just flat-out _turned me down_!"

Dean Winchester had every right to be indignant. Hell, every other guy on the face of the earth would have a right to be indignant, 'cause what the hell kind of chick does that? And most of all, it was _Dean freakin' Winchester_! When was the last time a girl turned him down?

Even Sam was shocked—albeit more entertained than anything else—though he just shook his head and chuckled. "Did she say why?" he asked around the penlight in his mouth as he traced the route of their next case on the map.

Dean leaned his elbow on the door, flicking his signal as he turned right. "She said her TiVo broke so she had to stay home and watch some show called _Glee_," he groused bitterly. Then he threw his hand up in disgust. "What in the hell is _Glee_ anyway? Is it about ecstasy addicts?"

Sam breathed out a laugh and pulled the penlight out of his mouth. "It's about a high school show choir."

"A _show choi—_" Dean turned to shoot an incredulous glare at his brother, who was either oblivious or simply chose to ignore it. Aside from the fact that a girl turned down _Dean Winchester_ to watch a _TV show_ about a damn _show choir_, there were more disturbing things. "Should I be worried you know that?"

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes longsufferingly. "_Glee_ is my life, Dean," he deadpanned. "Don't hate on the _Glee_."

Dean spared a glance at the road before fixing his little brother with a stare that was one part worry, one part trepidation, and about eight parts disgust. "Dude. Don't make me break out the holy water."

"It's called the Internet, dumbass," Sam sighed wearily.

Then he suddenly froze mid-eye-roll. The simple action had caused him to look up out the windshield and catch a glimpse of something flying against the full moon. At first glance, he hadn't thought much of it. It was a _bird_, for God's sake. It flew at night. How ominous.

…until it twisted in midair, and he got a clear view of arms and legs.

Sam lunged forward in his seat, dropping the flashlight when his head almost slammed into the dashboard as he peered up through the windshield to get a better look at the…

What the hell _was_ that?!

Dean, on the other hand, just stared at Sam again, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Completely disregarding safety this time, he continued to gawk at his weirdo of a brother. First that _Glee_ shit and now _this_?

Was this part of the slow mental deterioration that came with being Lucifer's vessel or something? Did the vessel have to be stupid in order to stroke Lucifer's vanity? How the hell did this shit work?

"Did your neck finally give out under the weight of your sideburns?!" Dean finally demanded. "What the hell is the matter with you?!"

He belatedly remembered to signal and was about to turn again when Sam suddenly cried out, "NO, KEEP GOING STRAIGHT!"

The F150 that was in the oncoming lane honked as Dean frantically swerved back onto his side of the road.

"WHAT THE HELL, SAM?!" he roared, too frazzled to punch his brother like he _deserved_.

"Keep straight until I tell you to turn!" Sam commanded in reply, still stretching awkwardly to peer through the windshield. "And call Castiel!"

Dean immediately realized that this wasn't the_ Glee-_loving Sam from five seconds ago. This was the hunter. So with only a minimal amount of grumbling, Dean pulled out his phone to call down an Angel of the Lord.

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

As she coasted through the currents, she couldn't help but bring up the bizarrely accurate sage wisdom of someone she once knew: _"The wind, young mutant, is mischievous enough to jack up one's hair should you find yourself on its bad side, but gentle enough to smooth it away from your face should you use the right angle, it is."_

Viola had been so damn weird.

Aria chortled to herself as she folded her wings in just enough to execute a tight twist in midair. Viola could have been equated to a stoned Yoda who'd switched brains with a model for Anthropologie. She was as pretty as she was weird—and Viola had been _gorgeous._

But then again, attractive or not, their group had pretty much been the pinnacle of weird. In more ways than one.

And following on that note, Aria was about three seconds away from nostalgically breaking out into the chorus of "Colors of the Wind" when she was rudely stopped by some nitwit who decided to _sit on his horn_. She glared down at the road below her to see a sleek black '67 Chevy Impala swerve away from smashing head-on into a truck.

Her mouth twitched up into a smirk—not at the almost-wreck, though that would've been pretty funny too. Paul would've pissed in his pants if he'd seen that Impala. He'd been in love with classic Chevys, and she was ninety-eight percent sure he would've landed and pretended to be a hitchhiker just to get a closer look. And maybe beat up the driver and stolen it just for the heck of it.

Aria laughed at the thought and shook her head.

She missed them. Vance, Paul, Viola, and even Ian—_freaking_ Ian.

Then she grimaced because she realized, _shit_, she was that far gone—calling up Viola's borderline-psychotic lines, Paul's penchant for grand theft auto, and _missing people in general._

She banked and swerved to the left, heading south. A minute later, when she glanced back down at the road below, the Impala was still there, apparently having turned left as well.

Her eyes traced the vintage car, but she wasn't smiling anymore. The fantasy image of Paul sitting in the driver's seat, grinning like an idiot shimmered and vanished to replaced with the very _real_ image of him flapping his wings to stay aloft with a "stray" piece of shrapnel jutting out of his chest. She wished her last image of him had been his smile. Paul had a nice smile—adorable dimples, eyes that crinkled at the corners, and everything. Instead, all she could see were his furrowed eyebrows, his mouth opening and closing silently, and eyes apologetically clouded in pain as if it was his fault he was dying.

Blinking out of the memory and wishing she could crack her skull open and soak her brain in some Clorox, Aria scored her fingers through her hair. That would've definitely been a prettier picture than Paul—her brain floating in a pool of Clorox in her open skull.

He'd been the strong one.

Vance had been the leader, the brains, the strategist, the _mastermind._ Aria had been the scout, the tracker, the _spy._ Viola was the distraction—always the diversion since she had a flair for the dramatic on top of the peacock-feather wings. Ian was stealth and speed—he'd be the first wave of the attack, taking out any oblivious idiot who managed to be in the worst place at the worst time. Paul was the muscle. He'd come in like the apocalyptic spawn of a hurricane, tornado, and an earthquake. Whoever managed to survive Ian would not survive Paul.

Her eyes burned with the threat of tears, but she swallowed and gritted her teeth, errantly remembering how Vance would've strangled her if he saw tears. Bastard hated tears.

And all of a sudden, she was just too tired to keep going. Her arms were lead, and her stomach was protesting loud enough to hear over the rush over the wind. She tipped left in a forty-five-degree angle to turn around, wheeling herself back toward the abandoned farmhouse she'd passed five miles ago.

But she should've gone with her gut feeling earlier—back when it told her to take that break right when she was above that barn—because she heard the shriek of tires and glanced down to see the Impala pulling a very hasty U-turn and nearly fishtailing into the ditch.

She sighed in frustration, folded in her wings, and dropped down into the forest.

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

"TURN LEFT NOW!"

Dean managed to wrench the wheel to the left without the tires screeching and alerting the bird-thing to their pursuit. If they'd been under normal circumstances, Sam would be decked out with two black eyes and a missing tooth for his absolutely _shitty_ navigational skills, but since they were currently chasing a goddamn _bird,_ Dean let it fly.

Pardon the pun.

"What is it?" an irritated voice growled from the backseat, making both Winchesters jump despite the frequency of such little surprises.

His mouth twitching with an unspoken reprimand, Sam opted to get right to the point. "Look out the window."

"Trees," Castiel answered blankly. "They're oaks, I belie—"

"Up at the _sky_, genius!" Dean barked impatiently. "There's some sort of angel up there, flying around like freaking Icarus, man!"

"Icarus was a fictional—"

Dean's jaw twitched. "YES, THANK YOU FOR THE HISTORY LESSO—LOOK OUT THE DAMN WINDOW, CAS!"

Castiel leaned forward between the two front seats and peered up through the windshield, his mouth hanging open a little as he stretched his neck to get a better view. Both Sam and Dean instinctively leaned away awkwardly.

"It is a bird that is now turning around."

"DAMN IT!" Dean snapped, jerking the wheel to the left to pull a very loud U-turn. "DAMN IT, DAMN IT, DAMN IT! That angel thing is onto us now!"

"That is not an angel."

Dean rubbed his forehead in frustration. "No kidding—_what is it then?!"_

The non-angel suddenly folded its wings in and practically dive-bombed into the forest.

"DAMN IT!" Dean barked, punching the steering wheel and then slowing down the car.

"It _was_ a girl," Castiel answered, leaning back against the seat. "A girl with wings."

The Winchesters froze and then: _"WHAT?!"_

"I said it's a girl with—"

"We _heard_ you," Sam interrupted bracingly. "What does that even _mean_? What is she _exactly_? A shapeshifter or…?"

"She's not any supernatural being," Castiel explained, his tone taking on a bitter edge. "She is a product of human science."

Dean actually turned at the waist to give the angel an incredulous look, and Sam had to lunge forward and grab the wheel before they smashed into a tree. "What—like some _mutant_?"

Castiel merely shrugged, his mouth set in a straight line. "I suppose you could call it that. She was an experiment."

"Is she evil?" Sam asked once Dean turned back to the road.

"I don't know and neither is this relevant to our current issues with the impending Apocalypse. Can I leave now?"

"_No_, Cas! We need to get that thing down here," Dean said. "Demon or not, we need to figure out if she's gonna be a problem."

Sam rolled down his window and craned his neck out to stare out into trees. "How are we supposed to get to her now? She's as good as gone in that forest."

"I don't know, Sam. You got any bird calls in that library of a brain of yours?" Dean snapped irritably.

"I think she's human enough to understand speech, Dean. Bird calls are probably not necessa—"

"Thank you, Cas!" Dean growled again. "You got any better ideas?"

When the question was met with complete silence, Sam twisted around to see that the backseat was empty. The brothers glanced at each other before leaning forward and squinting through the windshield as if they expected to see Castiel rise from the tops of the trees, wings unfurled with the mutant in tow.

Sam suddenly jerked back in surprise, gripping the door and the dashboard in shock. _"DEAN!"_

Dean slammed on the brakes, feeling another pang of guilt for the strain he'd been putting on his car all night. Castiel stood in the middle of the road in the glare of the headlights. He was braced behind a girl, pinning her arms and wings behind her back as he held her around the middle and getting a mouthful of feathers in the process.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" the girl shrieked furiously, struggling in Castiel's grip. "GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME! _WHAT _ARE YOU?!"

The celestial creature in question was struggling to keep a hold on her as she twisted around. It was almost like a choreographed dance—she'd slither out of his grip before he'd manage to grab her again, and the cycle continued.

Sam and Dean, on the other hand, gawked at the pair through the windshield. Long hair so dark it was almost black, a lean figure that screamed _trained fighter_, and pitch-black, red-tipped wings that almost seemed to have been dipped in blood.

"Holy shit," the brothers chorused.

As if she could hear them, her eyes zeroed in on the Winchesters, and her face shifted from surprise to cold fury.

"HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!" Castiel bellowed, craning his neck away from her wings and squeezing her tighter.

"Shit, shit, _shit_," Dean hissed as he and Sam simultaneously jumped out of the car to point their guns at the girl—woman—she-bird—_whatever._

She didn't miss a beat. Her struggles ceased only to bend a leg up and kick it back, snapping Castiel's leg into an awkward angle. His grip slackened in pain, and she punched him in the throat, the chest, the gut, and then the balls in quick succession. When he doubled over, she grabbed his head in both her hands and then rammed her knee into his face.

Stunned and groaning in pain, the angel dropped to the asphalt. The girl turned her fury to the Winchesters, giving them a disdainful once-over, unfazed by the fact that they were pointing .45's at her. In fact, it looked like it kinda pissed her off.

"Who are you?!" Dean barked, finally breaking the silence.

Castiel groaned, and the girl didn't even look as she kicked him in the ribs again. Her eyes were adamantly fixed on the brothers.

"Hey, enough with the kicking!" Dean growled, taking a step toward her.

As soon as his foot hit the ground, her wings snapped out—all twenty feet of midnight-black feathers. Falling into a crouch that would send her straight up, she gave them one last sneer before a low, gravelly voice broke the tense silence.

"You'll be flying against an Angel of the Lord. I suggest you stay down."

She spun around and took a step back in shock. Somehow going from bloodied-up on the ground to bloodlessly-rumpled and vertical, Castiel swiftly reached up to press two fingers against her forehead, and she sagged, eyes rolling up to the back of her head. He caught her before she hit the ground, wings hanging limply behind her.

He looked up at Sam and Dean, who finally lowered their firearms. "I think it would be wise to take her to a motel now."


	2. Feathers and Burgers

**2  
**_**Feathers and Burgers**_

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

When she got knocked out by mini-Inspector Gadget, she harbored a small hope that she would wake up painlessly.

You know—without the aid of brute force, electrocution, or fingernail-pulling. Her eyes would flutter open slowly, and she'd lift her head off her chest to take in her surroundings as she'd flex against the bindings around her wrists and ankles. She'd be tied to a chair in the middle of a cliché abandoned warehouse, sitting in the small cone of yellow from the light bulb hanging above her. Of course, she'd expect a throbbing headache because waking up from being rendered unconscious always brought about a headache, but she could deal with that.

Instead, she was slapped back into reality by ice-cold water that made her jump so hard that the chair she'd been duct-taped to tipped back and hit the floor. The impact of her head on the tile was just ever-so-pleasant.

She wasn't in an old, dimly-lit warehouse—it was a motel room decorated by someone who'd mixed shrooms with Valium. The wallpaper depicted an acid trip of aqua, white, and blue swirls. A melted-looking clock between the two twin beds on the far left side of the room nonchalantly ticked away. The only thing that would've completed the look was if Fred and Shaggy were dressed in their vintage costumes instead of their lumberjack fashions.

Fred was standing in front of her, holding a canister of what she assumed held the remnants of the water that had been previously tossed into her face. Shaggy was to her left and in the process of bending down to pull her and the chair back upright. Inspector Gadget was rigidly positioned at the window by the front door, peering through the small slit between the curtains.

Shaggy set her back up gently, gripping her shoulder to keep her steady. She spat out a little water and then grimaced and scowled.

"Salt water?" she rasped, gagging a little. "The _hell_ is the matter with you people?! Does the faucet not work?! You had to drive out to the Pacific?!"

Fred frowned at the canister in his hand as Shaggy scowled at him. "I _told_ you it was a waste of holy water," the latter said dryly, running his hands through his shaggy brown hair.

_Holy water?!_

She'd met her fair share of weirdos, but these guys were zooming right up that list.

"Shut up," Fred growled, narrowing his eyes at Shaggy. "It was worth a try."

The two guys glared at each other before Fred set the empty canister on the nearby table, pulled a chair in front of her, and straddled it. Hazel-green eyes zeroed in on hers before he finally spoke.

"Care to explain the, uh…" He held his hands out to his sides and wiggled his fingers.

What little regard she had for him (because he was pretty hot in that rugged kind of way) flew out the window.

"They're _wings_, bonehead," she deadpanned. "Not jazz hands."

He shot her a dirty look and glanced at Shaggy, who had his hand over his mouth, trying to cover a smile. He was cute. He had dimples and everything. Those sideburns though…

"All right, _fine_," Jazz Hands/Fred said exasperatedly as he turned back to Aria. "Explain the _wings_."

"What is there to talk about? They're wings, for crying out loud. I flap them. They help me fly."

That earned her another dirty look.

Shaggy finally took over the _horrible_ excuse of an interrogation and gave her this meaningful look, his forehead creasing. "Okay, look, we've all got some serious explaining to do, but we need to know exactly _what_ you are."

She tried not to be offended, but _seriously_?

"_Dude_, I'm a chick with wings—courtesy of some bastards who boast medical and science degrees that legitimize their penchant for thinking living creatures are life-size Mr. Potato Heads. I don't understand why you're so confused. _I, _on the other hand, have every right to be mildly _pissed off_ because I was unceremoniously _kidnapped_ by three _dimwits_ who strapped me to a chair, threw _holy water_ in my face like I've been freaking _possessed_, and is now demanding to know _what_ I am when it's pretty damn obvious!"

"I told you," Inspector Gadget said without turning away from the window. "She is a human-avian hybrid."

"And _you_," Aria barked at him caustically, "need to go-go-gadget your head up an elephant's ass!"

"_Okay! _Okay!" Shaggy interjected, holding up his hands. "We're really sorry, but in our line of work… Well, let's just say that we don't deal with normal aspects of life."

"Oh, just cut the crap, Sam," Fred impatiently interrupted in his deep, gruff voice and then turned to Aria. "We're hunters."

She blinked, unfazed. "Of _what_? Rabbits? Ducks? _Mutant hybrids_?"

Fred raised a challenging eyebrow and then started to list off his finger: "Demons, ghosts, werewolves, vampires—"

"Okay!" Aria cut him off, shaking my head in disbelief. "It's official. I've been kidnapped by psych ward escapees."

"He's an angel!" Fred blurted out petulantly, pointing at the Inspector as Shaggy—or Sam? Sammy? Samuel?—punched him in the arm and glared at him.

She gaped up at them. "_That_ was why he was calling himself an Angel of the Lord?" She almost burst out laughing. "Where's the flaming sword and incandescent robes?!"

The angel in question finally turned away to look straight at her. The guy was as impassive as a robot as he insisted in his gravelly voice, "I _am_ an angel—a warrior for God."

Aria bit her lip to keep from smiling. "I'm sure you are, buddy. We're totally on the same page. I've got wings too, remember? I just lost my halo—you got any spares in that coat?"

The poor little guy narrowed his eyes at her and strode forward. "If you _were_ an angel, then you'd fall under the category of the _fallen_ and—"

"Cas!" Fred cut him off impatiently. "Argue technicalities later!"

"Cas" gave her one last disapproving look before walking back to the window and resuming his post. Aria shook her head and shifted in the seat, trying to find her old, comfortable position. How long had it been since she'd been strapped to chair? Lord, the memories…

Wait.

Oh, wait.

They did not. They _did not—_

As if sensing a shift in the atmosphere of the room, the two numbnuts paused to look at her. Sam looked worried while He-Who-Had-Yet-To-Be-Named frowned in midly-disgusted nervousness.

Clenching her teeth to keep from completely losing her shit, Aria spoke quietly and slowly. "You…duct-taped…my…wings?"

The two guys actually took a step back.

"As…if…I could…_fly away_…while I was _strapped_…to a damn _chair_?" she continued, her lip twitching to curl up into a sneer as she glared up at them furiously. "You are going to have _hell_ to pay, you little _bitches_, when that tape...ends up _YANKING OUT MY FEATHERS_!"

Neither blockhead knew what to do after her little outburst, so they just kept staring. Aria shifted and rolled her shoulders, stretching her neck to regain some semblance of her previous calm.

"I gave you a little leeway with the salty holy water, seeing that you're all batshit crazy, but this…this is just crossing the line," she said evenly. "I mean, it's not as if I don't already have enough problems to deal with in my life on top of being a goddamn freak, but now you've gotta further complicate my existence by adding fucking _adhesive_ into the mix. Do you two fuckwits have any idea how hard it is to get _duct tape_ off feathers? How do you two manage to _breathe_ with those brains? Jesus."

Fred ran his hands over his face exasperatedly before he turned to look at Sam. "I don't have the energy to deal with this right now. I'm hungry. You hungry? I'm hungry. You haven't eaten. You're hungry. M'gonna get us some food."

Then he promptly snatched his keys off the nearby table and walked out the door.

Aria looked up at Sam, and he looked back down at her awkwardly. "Uh, sorry."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "A better apology would involve getting me off this chair."

He smiled apologetically and held his hands out. "I don't think so."

She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. "_Obviously_ I'm nothing _demonic_ since whatever you two were doing with the holy water didn't work and as far as I know, my problems didn't lie in the religious or spiritual departments, so the risk of demon exposure was fairly low for me. And why was that stuff salty anyway?"

He frowned a little at the sudden subject change, but answered anyway. "Salt, uh, helps ward things off a majority of the evil things we deal with like ghosts and demons, but it's not as universal as we wish it was."

She closed her eyes as if to collect her inner calm. She'd been honestly hoping (along with many other things) that Sam was simply waiting for Fred to leave before announcing that he'd been joking about the whole demon-thing and that Fred belonged in a psych ward, but neither of them had the money or insurance, so he volunteered to take care of his short friend.

Sam read her exasperated expression correctly, though, stuffing his hands into his pockets and leaning his head back to sigh at the ceiling before finally meeting her eyes again. "We lost our parents and a lot of really good friends to the crap you think we're spewing at you, okay?"

She grimaced. "I would've understood if you said you were…ghost hunters, at least, because there are a bunch of other people running around doing that, but _demons, vampires, and werewolves_? Can you blame me for not believing you?"

He mirrored her expression and bobbed his head understandingly. "I get where you're coming from but…just keep an open mind, okay? There's a whole underground of supernatural things that people hardly notice, but it's there. And it's our job to deal with it."

So she let it go. It wasn't worth fighting over, and honestly, she was just too tired to dispute it any further. She certainly kept an open mind though—especially concerning the nicely-muscled arms and the well-defined chest under his shirt.

Hey.

She was a girl strapped to a chair—it's not like she had anything better to do than ogle the man candy standing in front of her. Of course Fred had one hell of a body too, but his dickhead personality tipped the scales against his favor.

Pulling her thoughts out of the gutter, she decided to keep making conversation. "What about him?" she asked, jerking her chin toward "Cas," who was still frozen by the window like he was about to become a permanent fixture in the room.

Sam glanced at the direction she was gesturing to. "His name is Castiel. I know it's even more unbelievable than what else we've told you, but he really is an ange—oh, come on," he added when her expression dropped even more. "All this can't be _that_ hard to believe. You have _wings_, for God's sake."

"Yeah, but these were genetically engineered in a_ lab_," she pointed out. "This wasn't _natural._"

He breathed out a chuckle. "But _look at you_! You're practically an angel already. The fact that your anatomy—"

"Has been grossly tinkered with."

"—has been genetically modified," he said with a sympathetic and sheepish look, "in order for you to be able to actually take flight is…_amazing_."

She wasn't entirely sure why she felt her face just sort of involuntarily _fall._ She expected him to be sympathetic—match his face and everything—not be _awestruck_ in a good way. That was the tone those bastard scientists had used when the team had taken their first group flight, and the implications that always saturated that tone would never_ not _disturb her.

Quickly blinking away her previous expression and coolly replacing it with indifference, she sighed and reclined her head. "Look, dude, you're not getting it. A bunch of sickos tweaked my DNA _here on earth_ to make me into the freak I am now. As…_amazing_ as you think it may be, it's not as far-fetched as real angels. Real science was involved in this—you can practically follow along with the reports with a college-level textbook and have it make sense. Whereas…_real angels_? With _powers_ and shit? Come on!"

He narrowed his eyes at her, but the corners of his mouth curled in some weird amusement. "Don't tell me that you don't have powers yourself. You managed to singlehandedly take down _Castiel_."

She just blinked again. "I don't know how that's supposed to make me feel special." She wasn't gonna say anything about him being right about her powers. He didn't need to know, therefore he wasn'tgoing to know.

"Only angels can thoroughly beat up other angels the way you took him down," Sam said patiently, sounding pretty impressed. "That can only mean…_enhanced _strength, speed, and agility on top of whatever else they must've done to you."

_Now_ there was the sad tone she'd been expecting before. But she wouldn't say a word about it. "Look, the fact is I'm textbook, and you guys are…Bible and mythology books. I don't know how accepting you think I am of _super_natural creatures because I am not supernatural. I'm _un_natural."

He sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets, perching himself on the edge of the table as he studied her curiously. Choosing to ignore his stare, she frowned and adjusted herself in the chair, growling and mumbling curses as the restraints around her wings were beginning to make her cramp up.

Whoever's idea it was to tape her wings was going to pay.

And pay _dearly._

The silence they'd lapsed in as Sam stared and Aria plotted was suddenly broken when her stomach rumbled ominously. She froze, a little embarrassed. She hadn't eaten since breakfast, and she'd been flying ever since then. Frankly, it was surprising she'd made it to nightfall without any stops—or without blacking out entirely.

Soft chuckles had her ripping her gaze away from the dark green carpet to meet hazel-green eyes. "You hungry?" he asked, rubbing the back of his neck as he watched her.

She shot him a withering look. "No, my stomach's just getting territorial against my _liver_."

He suddenly grinned—dimples and everything—and she found herself liking it. He looked like the type of guy who needed to smile more often.

"So," she started awkwardly, shifting in her seat uncomfortably, "are you and Jazz Hands like…?"

He coughed and cleared his throat. "He's my older brother. I'm, uh, Sam. Sam Winchester. And he's Dean."

She smirked. "I like 'Jazz Hands' better."

He smiled down at her, crossing his arms over his chest. She watched the tension in his shoulders sag comfortably. "What about you?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. "What about me?"

"Your name," he answered.

She seriously considered giving him a fake name like…_Sky Weaver _or _Feather_. Or _Brunehilde. _It was how they'd done things all those years ago. Not giving your real name meant not giving an inch. But everyone in her team was too dead to give any inches, so it hardly mattered at this point anyway.

"Aria. I'm Aria."

His smile warmed, and she half-expected him to straighten up and hold out his hand for me to shake. "Nice meeting you, Aria."

She nodded and then cleared her throat, on the verge of an anxiety attack—or at least an Aria version of an anxiety attack. "So now that we've got the formalities outta the way, can you call Jazz Hands and tell him to get three times the amount of food he normally gets?"

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

Dean's hand was _literally_ a _centimeter_ from the handle when the door flew open so fast that he nearly jumped back and dropped the three bags of burgers and fries he was balancing in the crook of his arm.

"Damn," Sam muttered, sounding shocked and impressed as he took the bags from Dean and headed back to the table where Miss Nephilim was smirking smugly. "You were right."

She maintained her smirk as she turned to look at Dean. Thankfully she was still taped to the chair since it was fairly obvious to everyone that as soon as she was out of the chair, she'd be out of the room a split-second later. But she was in a much better mood than earlier—a promising development.

"Welcome back, Jazz Hands," she said with only a slight _hint_ of disdain as her dark eyes followed Sam, who was pulling out the contents of the bag and setting them on the table.

"Who was right about what?" Dean asked, walking to the fridge to grab a can of beer.

"Aria," Sam replied. "She heard you coming and told me when to open the door."

_Aria_? Dean's eyebrows rose as he shot a glance at Mutant X. Her eyes were closed as she leaned forward and inhaled the smell of the fries and burgers that Sam was putting in front of her.

"Heightened sense of hearing—one of the many perks of being raised in a Petrie dish," was her mumbled explanation as she inched the chair closer to the table.

She overshot and nearly fell onto her face again before managing to catch herself and rebalance. When she glared up at Sam with a pointed look, the younger Winchester chuckled, pulled out a knife, and started hacking at Aria's bindings. The older Winchester watched in shell-shocked silence, his beer two inches from his lips.

"Sam, what the—"

"Calm your nipples," Aria chided, rubbing her newly-freed wrists gingerly while Sam bent down to cut her ankles free. "It's not like I'm gonna fly away. I haven't eaten since this morning, and even that was just a granola bar. I can't even stand up at this point. Trust me, I ain't flying nowhere."

"Flying takes a lot of calories, so Aria needs more than the normal two-thousand a day," Sam elaborated as he straightened up and grabbed a burger off the table to toss at Aria before he rounded her chair to carefully cut her wings free. "That's why I got you to triple the order.

Dean's eyes widened, beer completely forgotten. "_She's_ gonna eat all that?!"

She frowned and glared at him defensively. "Not _all_ of it," she said through a mouthful. "Unless you _want _me to."

The mischievous glint in her eyes suddenly wrenched Dean into entirely different thoughts about what he "_wanted_ her to" in an entirely different context. Despite the wings, the snarky attitude, and the whole "Jazz Hands" issue, Hawkgirl was a _babe_. Not like the busty and leggy blondes in cutoff shorts and bikini tops. Aria was wearing some worn-looking jeans and a light jacket over a fitted shirt—sort of like Anna, but instead of angel food cake, it was _brownies_. She wasn't as curvy either, but they were still definitely there. This girl was just something…_different_. He'd definitely—wait.

"How _old_ are you anyway?" Dean asked warily.

Her glare turned to exasperated disbelief before she glanced at Sam. "Can he _be_ any more random?"

Instead of looking sheepish or embarrassed for his brother, Sam just look as curious as Dean. He paused in the middle of cutting her left wing free as he leaned around and studied her curiously. "How old _are_ you?"

Aria's gaze lingered on Sam for half a second longer before she sighed and turned back to her burger. "Twenty-three." Then she took such a huge bite that both Winchesters felt that they _should_ have been mildly revolted at the sight, but she somehow made it look so damn neat. They continued to stare at her for entirely different reasons now, but she ignored it and shoved a few fries into her mouth.

The word "freak" had never carried so many different meanings. She ate _all_ but the three burgers and two orders of fries for the guys, but she still wasn't full. She practically inhaled Castiel's burger when the angel turned it down and continued to stare out the window. At this point, she'd shaken out her wings and began gingerly peeling off the residual adhesive off her black and red feathers, wincing and grumbling to herself from time to time.

Dean was equally fascinated and horrified by the sheer amount of feathers in front of him, and he was practically drowning in the questions he needed answered. The only things stopping him were the huge bites he was ripping out of his burger and the trepidation of her immediately clamping up in the face of his inquiries. Aria finally stopped and fixed him with a longsuffering expression.

"Just _ask_," she sighed wearily, flicking a wad of adhesive from the tips of her long fingers.

Dean finally managed to close his mouth and swallow. "Okay, what the hell happened to that hostile mutant freak that brought down freakin' _Castiel_? Why are you so willing to talk all of a sudden?"

She gestured to Sam with her chin. "Blame him. Bastard thought I'd agreed to some sort of _friendship_ as soon as I asked him for food, and he went ahead and started a whole barrage of scientific questions as if he was some college senior whose entire educational career depended on whether or not my bones were hollow and light enough to successfully achieve flight."

Dean frowned at his little brother disappointedly. Forever a _geek_.

"No, seriously," Aria continued. "You don't understand. He pestered me about my _bones_ until I finally cracked. We go from arguing the differences of supernatural and unnatural to making formal acquaintances to asking for food and then to my _bones._"

"Sam, stop being weird," Dean commanded disappointedly.

"Too late," Aria quipped.

Dean stifled a smirk at the expense of his brother, coughed, straightened, and then cleared his throat as he turned back to Aria. "All right. Start from the beginning then. And skip over the scientific crap—Sam can nerd out another time."

"Jerk."

"Shut up, bitch."

Dean took note of the way Aria followed their brief banter with what looked like _sadness_ in her eyes before it vanished. She turned back to peeling off duct tape before speaking again.

"A brief overview over my story so you can get the bigger picture—I was part of a team. We did government missions. We defected. We became _defective_. Everyone is dead but me and Ian," she said shortly. Then she continued in a clinical tone, "There were five of us: Vance, Paul, Viola, Ian, and me. We were experiments that had gone successfully and had the abilities to be utilized as the government's top-secret black ops team. We were assigned missions until the scientists decided to make backups—just in case we died. Turns out that this new batch was more successful since the gene-splicers were able to incorporate more advanced abilities and shit—aside from the wings. But since our eventual replacements were still in diapers, the sons of bitches decided to try and upgrade us since we were still technically commissioned. That wound up being a really bad idea."

Sam leaned his arms on the table with a dark look. "Imagine trying to put a new Lamborghini engine in the Impala."

Dean's eyes widened, and his eyebrows furrowed. "So you're…_broken_ right now?"

She shrugged and nodded. "Kind of. Vance, Paul, and Viola were the eldest, so they were subject the first few…_faulty_ upgrades. It's definitely a different process tweaking someone's DNA when they're almost fully matured—a lot harder than when they're still little cells. The bastards learned from their mistakes by the time Ian and I were on the table, that's why we're still alive. But I'm pretty sure things are gonna start going wrong soon enough."

Sam and Dean exchanged a cautious glance was just laced with a little bit of worry.

"We defected after Vance started showing some weird symptoms," she continued unaffectedly. "We were already in the middle of a mission, but we just up and left anyway. We disabled our tracking devices and dropped off the map for a while. We were fine for maybe two months before all hell broke loose. After the dust died down, Vance was missing, Paul and Viola were dead, and Ian and I were just waiting for our own expiration dates."

She kept her explanation so cryptic and finished so decisively that both Winchesters knew to drop the subject of her old friends immediately. It was hard to believe that she must've still been a teenager at the time, and it didn't make it better that the government was involved. When were they _not_, after all? Who knew what other kind of shit they had these kids doing?

"So what about this new team you were talking about? They still in diapers now?" Dean asked, trying to change the subject. Diaper-wearing little bird-children sounded like something that should at least be a semi-happy memory for her. The picture in his mind were cherubs.

She smiled—a genuine one—at one of her feathers and chortled. "They _completely rebelled_. They broke out of the lab a month before everything went to shit on our side of the world. You heard of Itex?"

Dean frowned, remembering the snippets that he'd heard on the news radio. "Company with the riots."

"Yeah," she said. "Itex produced diapers, baby formula, and mutant bird-kids. That new team was the one who started the riots and brought the corporation down."

"Where were you when all that happened?" Dean asked, trying to keep as much suspicious out of his voice as he could.

If it was possible for someone to have an expression so dark it was practically a black hole, she'd be the one to do it. "The flock—what the scientists nicknamed that new team—were created here in America. My team and I were based in China."

Confused, Dean closed his eyes and frowned before fixing her with a narrow-eyed stare. "But you worked for the U.S. government?"

"We dealt with foreign…_issues_ on the Asian continent," she answered, grimacing at some distant memory. "When we turned on them, we disappeared into the island countries in the Pacific—primarily Japan and the Philippines. As things started spiraling outta control, we made our way back to the West to try and find someone willing to patch us up, but obviously that didn't pan out. The flock—Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel—were running _away_ from the dipshits at the labs while _we_ were kidnapping them and holding them hostage."

She was met with identical expressions of raised eyebrows, agape mouths, and wide eyes. It wasn't the full-out shock most people expressed, but these were the Winchesters. Not much could shock them at this point, but this was still pretty out there. The two exchanged another wordless look, the same word hanging in their minds:

_Hostage?_

She'd seemed…good. Sure, she used to work for the government, doing God-knew-what, but she'd defected. And, okay, yes, she was a mutant with wings and extra abilities, but she wasn't ripping them apart or starting fights. Yeah, she still had that specific _roughness_ that came from dealing with the government and their bullshit, but there was still that air about her that while she was dangerous, she wasn't a threat to them. Not in that way. That must mean _something_.

Seemingly oblivious of the Winchesters' expressions, Aria kept going. "Once Vance, Paul, and Viola died, Ian and I went off and to try and find our own cures for a while. But eventually we just gave up and started knocking things off our bucket lists."

"_Bucket list_?!" Dean echoed disbelievingly. "What the _hell_?"

She scowled at him. "Mutant freaks can have bucket lists too, asshat."

"But you—" Dean shifted uncomfortably, glancing at Sam and even Cas before turning back to her. "You're just gonna go down without a fight?"

She laughed and shook her head. "I've been fighting all my life. I need a break, man. We were gonna die eventually. We were, for all intents and purposes, _retired_, so we just decided to continue the path of a senior citizen and start living life to the fullest—or as full as we could. Of course, we ended up having a little falling out and went our separate ways."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "And where is he now exactly?"

She sensed his misgivings and waved him off. "Chill. Ian's harmless. He's probably flying around somewhere in New Zealand or Australia. He had a strange fixation on koalas."

"Should we be worried about _you_?" Dean suddenly asked.

Sam glowered at him furiously, but Aria didn't seem fazed by it. She knew he wasn't asking about her well-being. He was worried about her status as a threat—could see it in the set of his shoulders and the coldness in his eyes.

She didn't hesitate in her answer. "Yes."

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

It was true, though. She could already feel the hostile vibes just _cascading_ off Dean, and Sam's forehead was perpetually creased with worry. She didn't feel like lying to them. What did she have left to lose after all?

She wished she was at least just _slightly_ confused as to why she was so at home with these two idiots. Don't get her wrong—it's not like she's always trapped in awkward situations with random people because as a testament to her weirdness and general hatred for awkward situations, she made a point to make random conversations with anyone just to find some semblance of entertainment in her life. This incident, however, was just crossing the line. If she was confused about it, then it would mean that she wasn't at all comfortable with it. That means that she still had her hesitations and still had her paranoia intact.

She could say that she hadn't _completely _lost it.

But she couldn't. She was comfortable with them. The hairs on the back of her neck were flat and still. Her shoulders were relaxed, her forehead creaseless, and her mouth even turned up in the barest whisper of a smile. And she also wished she could say she was comfortable with them because they had such…_trustworthy _faces and that they were simply guys who fought evil. Literally.

She even wished she could say that she trusted them purely for shallow reasons like they were _hot_.

But no.

She trusted them because when she looked at their faces, she saw the exact same thing she did when she looked into mirrors—that flat, hollow look that told her they've been through shit and even though they hadn't gone through the exact same situations as her, they knew how she felt. The weariness she knew was plastered all over her face was the same type she saw on Sam and Dean Winchester.

Oh, she didn't trust them _completely_ and _explicitly_, of course. There was still that whole demon-werewolf-vampire-ghost-angel shit that her mind still had a hard time poking with a stick. (Which brought her to the errant thought that she should probably warn them about those damned Erasers. She was about 85% sure that Bryce, Anders, and Finn started roaming the American Midwest when they went rogue.) A part of her—as eensy and weensy as it could be—believed them because of Castiel's little teleportation stunt that had her standing on a bough fifty feet from the ground, laughing to herself that the numbskulls in the Impala couldn't think of getting to her anymore, and then finding herself with someone stronger than Paul holding her from behind as she stood on the black asphalt of the road in the spotlight of a pair of headlights.

That was one of her biggest "what the hell" moments. Definitely.

The fact that an alleged _angel_ was dressed in a _trench coat_ and was staring out the window as if he'd just exchanged longing glances with a basilisk straight out of the Chamber of Secrets was just too difficult to come to terms with. Then you had the teleportation—something even the labcoat-wearing bastards were hesitant to dabble with.

But she had firsthand experience with it already. If he wasn't an angel, he was a brain-damaged, psychotic teleporter who'd escaped from whatever parallel dimension and put two seemingly-sane, attractive men in some sort of trance, leading them to believe he was a heavenly warrior.

But if he _actually_ was a legitimate ange—

NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, _NO_. No.

Just…no.

No.

She wasn't buying it. Buying that Castiel was an angel meant paying for the rest of the package that involved ghosts, demons, vampires, and God-only-knew what else.

No, no, no, no, no, no—

"Why should we be afraid of you?" Dean asked, his voice suddenly cold and flat as he suddenly wrenched her from her leisurely float along an old Egyptian river.

She shrugged. "If your demons happen to decide to possess me—like how Sam explained to me earlier—you should be scared shitless. You don't want the faulty upgrades those pricks installed used against you."

Dean's visible swallow made her smile sadly. "Why?"

"Because I can track anyone anywhere."

Burger completely forgotten, Dean spun around to the ange—_dimension-travelling psychotic teleporter._ "Cas!"

"She's right," was the answer they all received as the man still would _not_ look away from the damned window.

Aria vaguely wondered if throwing something at him would make him turn, and her eyes strayed to the crumpled-up burger wrappers in front of her. Her plot to use Castiel's head as target practice was derailed, however, with his next words:

"The forces are stirring. Keeping Aria with you placed her on the metaphorical demonic radar."

A solid _bang_ resounded through the room when she dropped her head on the table in frustrated defeat. Mutants, demons, Erasers, vampires—she just _had_ to be born on the unbelievable side of the world. Maybe if she walked into that closet, she could escape to Narnia.

"Wait a minute—so there's a chance she actually _could_ be possessed?!" Sam demanded worriedly.

"Yes," Castiel responded bluntly.

"So I should leave then?" Aria offered, her voice muffled by the table.

"NO," was the chorused answer.

"That'll only put you in greater risk," Castiel explained, finally turning and walking toward the table. "You're better off staying here where we can provide you with a certain degree of protection."

"Protec—" Aria cut herself off, sighed, sat up, rolled her eyes, and leaned back in the chair. "I can take care of myself. I've done it for years, and I've survived perfectly fine as is. Just…hand me some holy water or whatever, and I'll get outta your hair. I'm pretty sure you have better things to do than hold me prisoner. I'd clear through your wallets in three days flat."

"No," Dean said, staring her down with those hazel eyes. "Demons need a hell of a lot more than just salt and holy water these days."

Salt? She got the holy water, but _salt_? Really? She'd thought Sam was just jerking her chain with that. What did Pepper do? Empower them?

"These days?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow. "What? They upgraded too?"

Sam, Dean, and Castiel all leveled her with a look. It was Sam who spoke, though, which made what he said about three billion times more…problematic. Since he was the more believable one.

"We're in the middle of the Apocalypse."

Aria closed her eyes and dropped her head into her hand. "Lord Jesus Almighty."

A small part of her brain registered what they said. From a Christian perspective, she could consider it what with all the climate change and Nostradamus crap. Not to mention the downward spiral of the world economy. But the bigger, dominant part of her brain just sat there and chanted "what the fuck" like a mantra.

"All right. Okay, you all seem like really nice guys—what with you not clipping my wings and turning me over to the nearest zoo—but I really need to get away from…" she waved her hands in the general area of _all over the place_ and continued pointedly, "_this_. I have enough shit in my life to deal with. I'm not gonna get dragged into this bizarre little universe you've got here. If you're telling me the truth—which I _sincerely_ and _ardently_ hope you are _not_—then, oh, well, too bad. I guess all things must come to an end. But regardless, I would not want to spend the last few days of my life on this earth with…_all this_."

She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, heading for the door, when Dean caught her arm. She looked down at the way his calloused fingers were wrapped around her arm and then pulled her eyes up to how he regarded her seriously.

"You heard us. I won't repeat myself," he threatened in a low voice. "Don't make me stop you."

Lips set in a straight line, Aria's only response to that was, "Don't fight me, Dean."

She wrenched her arm out of his grip and made it two steps before his hand caught her again. This time, she let the guilt just _flow_ as she backhanded him, sending him flying into the wall. When Sam lunged in front of her, she rammed the heel of her hand into his chest, and he staggered back into one of the twin beds, completely winded. Castiel moved to touch her forehead again, but she twisted and threw a roundhouse kick that _should've_ decapitated him but only rendered him unconscious.

When she straightened up, Sam's hand clamped around her wrist.

"Aria," he gasped, still trying to regain his breath, "please, you can't—"

"Trust me," she told him sadly. "You three are much better off without me hanging around. Especially if you're in the spin cycle with the Apocalypse."

Then with a disturbing amount of regret, she slammed her fist into his face and caught his dead weight before he hit the ground. She deposited him on the bed, gave one last cursory look around the motel room, and left.

She opted for strolling through the 4 AM haze since she hadn't eaten enough to fly for more than twenty minutes. The moon was out in full-force, but the night was so dark that it she didn't even need to hide her wings. The faulty streetlights helped too since they kept flickering.

Aria was barely out of the motel parking lot, grumbling about faulty government light bulbs, when she almost smashed into a girl running past. Even without the black leather miniskirt, the silky red top with more holes than material in the design, the fishnet stockings, and the spike heels, Aria was more than aware of the fact that this was a hooker.

She'd never met one face-to-face though, so she wasn't exactly sure how to react—apologize or scream "CRABS!" She settled for "whoops" instead.

The woman turned to her with a panicked expression. Her eyeliner and mascara were running, and her magenta lipstick was smeared across one cheek. "O-Oh, my God. Oh, my God."

Aria frowned. Did she really look that scary? She tried to tuck her wings in even though it was a futile effort sometimes, but it was 4 AM. You couldn't tell these sorts of things.

But on the off chance that the hooker was afraid of something aside from the dangerous and oftentimes bloodthirsty mutant soldier in front of her, Aria had to ask, "Are you okay?"

"There's s-s-someone," the hooker stammered, running her hands through her sun-streaked blonde hair and shuffling back and forth between her feet as her lower lip trembled, "s-s-someone in the back alley. I thought h-he w-w-w-wanted to—"

Aria peered over the woman's head, squinting into the alley between two brick buildings. She couldn't see past five feet in the thick darkness, but she could distinctly hear something dripping. But nothing else. No footsteps, no shuffling, no heartbeat.

"It's okay, it's okay, I'm a cop," Aria lied reassuringly, patting the woman's shoulder. Pretty Woman wasn't gonna get a knight in shining armor tonight, but she was gonna get a mutant hybrid who needed to kick some ass to relieve some stress, so it would have to suffice."

Aria moved forward to put herself between the woman and whatever was in the alley. A bitter tang in the air had her grimacing and practically sneering into the black alley.

"You said he was in there?" Aria asked over her shoulder. "Is he still there?"

The smell got stronger, and the grimace vanished off Aria's face. _Shit_. She spun back around to face the woman whose once-green eyes were now pitch-black. Even the whites. The panic was replaced with smug arrogance.

"Of course he never left. Can't walk outta there without a heart…and a head."

Shit.


	3. Blood and Castles

**3  
**_**Blood and Castles**_

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

"Wake up."

Sam's eyes snapped open, and he immediately regretted it. Blinded by the afternoon sun and feeling like his head housed a drunk fraternity rave, he clutched at his head, trying to ease the erratic thumping. Castiel was bent over him with a worried and slightly annoyed expression, but the angel quickly backed away when Sam sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the of the mattress. Dean was already perched at the foot of the other bed, holding a cold beer to the huge bruise on his right cheek.

"Where's Aria?" the younger Winchester croaked as he surveyed the relatively small amount of damage inflicted on the motel room.

"Gone," Castiel replied.

Dean rolled his eyes and lowered the beer to take a swig. "No shit, genius. Do you know _where_?"

"She's been kidnapped by demons."

"Well, _shit."_

Somewhere in the backs of their minds, they'd known it was bound to happen. As soon as they lugged her to the hotel room and strapped her to the chair, the risk had been silently tugging at the hems of their jeans. But the fact that it _did_ happen was still upsetting.

"A mutant host with supernatural abilities is like the demonic Holy Grail," Castiel added, his tone awkward as he struggled with the human simile.

Sam just dropped his head into his hands. "She warned us about her getting possessed."

"One: she was _mocking_ us when she said that," Dean pointed out bitterly, "and two: she's the one who _left us_. Quit feeling guilty that the chick you've got the hots for all of a sudden went and got herself abducted."

"We're the ones who kidnapped her in the first place," Sam snapped back, neither lifting his head nor acknowledging Dean's interjected assumption. "Then _you_ decided to make things more complicated by chucking salted holy water in her face and making her think we're psychopaths. And then you make it even worse by slapping her with the whole hunter-thing."

"Okay, _fine_," Dean relented, "maybe I could've gone about it in a different way, but she's still the one who left."

"Regardless of whose fault it is and even if this isn't a war between angels," Castiel interrupted, "Aria is a gamble. She said it herself. She considers herself neither good nor evil. In spite of the fact that she may not be Lucifer's true vessel, if he gets a hold of her, _many_ things can go _very_ wrong."

Dean met him with a withering stare. "Oh, don't tell me that this…_girl_ can either speed up the Apocalypse or stop it completely."

"No one—not even a mutant girl—can stop the Apocalypse, but she _is_ a weapon that can play a decisive role."

"Decisive or not," Sam interjected stonily, "she won't be playing any part in this—not just because of her alleged moral ambiguity but because she's got enough to deal with. We dragged her into this, and it's our responsibility to drag her back out."

"I personally don't see that much of a problem," Dean groused. "We're practically on the same side as the demons since they're not exactly hyped up to see Lucifer taking over either."

Sam and Castiel gave him the same exact glare, effectively silencing him.

"You remember how screwed up Meg was after we exorcised that demon?" Sam reminded him quietly. "Aria would probably fight tooth and nail before she got possessed, and by the time we pull the demon out of her, it might be too late to save her."

"She said she was dying anyway," Dean muttered.

"Would _you_ want to die like that?!" Sam snapped. "Do _you_ wanna die in a battle you have absolutely _nothing_ to do with?!"

"Oh, for God's sake, Sammy! Face it—we didn't choose this fight either! Fights choose the people, not the other way around! If someone backs you into a corner and punches you, you can't stand there and call yourself a damned pacifist while the other guy's trying to knock your brains out through the back of your skull—you're gonna have to swing back!"

"So what are you saying?! We should just leave her?!" Sam demanded as Dean stood up and set his empty beer can on the bedside table.

"Dude!" Dean blurted out, finally turning to face his brother. "Since when do you _care_ so much?!"

"Just because she doesn't seem so _innocent_ doesn't mean she _isn't_!" Sam argued defensively. "You were gone for a couple of hours, Dean, and we didn't exactly have much to do but talk!"

"And talk they did," Castiel muttered vaguely.

"You saw her face—you saw how she answered your questions," Sam said, trying to regain some of his calm. "She's screwed up, Dean. She hasn't been to hell and back, and she hasn't dealt with the monsters we've hunted, but she's got her own hell, her own monsters. I can't just sit here and—"

Dean sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. _My brother has a monster fetish,_ he told himself sadly. _Madison, Ruby, and now Aria…_

"Okay, okay, _fine_! But if we see Aria again, she's gonna have blacked-out eyes and an evil smirk," Dean said bracingly. "She'll be dead-set on either killing us or selling us out to Lucifer in exchange for immunity when he wipes out the entire demon race. And when that happens, I'm not hesitating when I stab her with that knife."

"You're not even giving her a chance!"

"You asked me if I saw her face, and I did, Sam!" Dean gritted out through his teeth. "That girl is a _soldier_. If we can't pull out whatever son of a bitch is riding her ass, I'm sure as hell that she'd gladly accept a knife to her gut."

"That cannot be our only option!" Sam shot back, throwing his hands up.

"Well, you ain't going all Demon Boy and sucking the bastard right outta her!"

"I didn't say—"

"It seems that you two have a little more time to strategize Aria's rescue or impending death," Castiel interrupted.

He'd been staring off distantly, but something seemed to pass over his face and yank him back into reality. He hesitantly turned to look at the two with a dark frown.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, scrubbing his hands up and down his face and wincing when he forgot about his bruise.

"Aria has not been possessed yet," the angel replied. "She's being held prisoner. She'll be auctioned off tonight."

Sam and Dean froze and stared at him in disbelief.

"An _auction_?!" Sam cried, shooting up off his bed and brushing off the dizziness. "_What?!_"

Dean shook his head. "In exchange for _what_?! _Souls_ for wings?!"

Sam had resorted to pacing back and forth in front of the beds. "Why?! Demons are free-for-all types! Since when do they hold _auctions_ for host bodies?!"

"As if we didn't already have enough on our plates with the freakin' _Apocalypse_," Dean growled, looking to be on the verge of rubbing his fingers straight through the skin of his forehead and kneading his skull. "It was Crowley, wasn't it? That slimy son of a bitch."

"It _does_ make sense if Crowley did it," Sam muttered suddenly, his anger boiling down to a simmer. "He's enough of a conniving bastard to pull a stunt like this, but it's just not his MO."

Dean hesitated before nodding grudgingly. "If this was him, he would've long-since shown up to rub it in our faces or drop some obscure hint. That guy is way too comfortable dropping in for a visit nowadays."

"So if it isn't Crowley, then who is it?" Sam asked, turning back to Castiel who'd coincidentally zoned out again.

"Please, please, please, don't say we've got another Lilith on our hands," Dean prayed, moving his fingers to knead his temples with his knuckles.

"Ba-boom" still echoed in a few of his nightmares, and he would never be able to look at little blonde girls in frilly dresses without cringing just a little bit.

Castiel turned to give him a puzzled look. "Lilith has no clones or spawn. I don't understand why you're afraid of—"

Dean moaned. "_Oh, for the love of_—I can't use _any_ figurative expression with you around, man!"

Sam growled and rolled his eyes. "Look, it doesn't even matter who did it—we need to find Aria before she's possessed or sold or whatever—Cas, do you know where she is?"

"If you say 'hell,' I'm gonna—"

"Dean, shut up. Cas, where is she?"

"Orlando."

Sam's eyebrows shot up, and Dean just closed his eyes.

"Florida?" Dean choked out, fighting the urge to ram his head into a wall.

Castiel nodded once. "Disney World's Magic Kingdom, to be specific."

* * *

There was a soft rustling of feathers and then a loud scrape across linoleum floors as Dean and Sam materialized, staggering and falling against tables. Dean dropped the duffel bag full of weapons, looking like he was about to have a reunion with his dinner.

"Damn it, Cas!" he croaked. "What'd I tell you about this teleporting crap?!"

"I apologize that your next defecation will be a week from now, Dean, but speed was of the essence. We only have a small window of opportunity to get Aria back," he said, walking toward the window and peering outside. "I'm scouting ahead. Find higher ground. I'll find you."

And then he vanished in a muted flurry of feathers.

Dean hunched over and braced his hands on his knees, taking deep steadying breaths. Sam was ducking behind chairs and tables to discreetly poke his head out the door of the restaurant—"Casey's Corner" to be specific.

The park was deserted—what with it being three in the morning and all. The only light came from the spotlights that illuminated the huge mob that had congregated around the entrance to Cinderella's Castle

"Of all places—why Disney World?" Dean grumbled, leaning against the counter.

Sam pulled his head back into the restaurant. "Pretty sure it's 'cause of the castle. Universal Studios doesn't have anything this big."

Dean snorted. "And since when do demons care about that kind of shit?"

"It's the end of the world." Sam shrugged. "What the hell, right?"

Dean sighed. "Go big or go home."

Sam nodded, bent down, and zipped open the duffel, pulling out a sawed-off. "We need to get closer. That statue of Disney and Mickey's blocking the main view."

Dean muttered something about C-4 and Mickey's head, but he still moved from behind the counter, crouching as he ran and pressed his back against the wall to sidle up to the window, scoping out any better hiding places.

"There are demons up on the turrets of the castle," Sam said. "We can't make a dash for it—they'll see us coming."

"And we're right on freaking Main Street, USA," Dean growled exasperatedly. "Demons are slithering all over the place, and it's not like we got an unlimited supply of ammo. You'd think having an _angel_ would help, but not by much and definitely not against four hundred _freaking_ demons. How the hell did they find about this so fast? Aria was kidnapped how many hours ago?"

"Aria's an asset," Sam said, handing Dean a .45. "Something as valuable as her? Word'll get around real quick." He zipped up the bag again and heaved it over his shoulder.

They crept out of the restaurant, sidling left along the building and then ducking behind the posts and patio tables to make a dash for the Crystal Palace. They made slow progress, ducking behind trees before dropping onto all fours and army-crawling across the bridge, past the Adventureland entrance. They crossed another bridge and hid along the trees, making their way along to the buildings straight ahead. They twisted around the shops and restaurants of Liberty Square and finally made it into the pink-colored ground of Fantasyland, where they stole into a patch of trees next to Mickey's PhilharMagic.

Dean shoved his .45 in the waistband of his jeans before grabbing a rifle from the bag and clambering up a particularly fat tree. Sam heaved himself up a nearby tree, armed with a pair of binoculars. Once they were both situated on sturdy branches, Sam peered through binoculars and Dean lowered his eye to the rifle scope.

Demons—men, women, and even a few kids here and there—were assembled around a stage right in front of the castle. Two daises—one small and the other bigger—were situated on either side of the stage, the bigger one with a fancy-looking arch in the middle. Hanging from the arch was something covered with a blue tarp, and judging by the smug smirk on the tall, lanky demon with the curly brown hair who was standing on the other dais, that was where Aria was. The lack of movement under the tarp most likely meant she was unconscious—what's worse was the small puddle of blood pooling below her.

Dean shuffled behind the scope of the rifle. "Am I the only one who just now thinks that this could very well be a trap?"

"Aria's too much of a prize to use in exchange for us," Sam pointed out. "Besides, we're the only ones standing in the way of them and the angels who don't give a rat's ass about their survival. There's no point."

"And even if it is a trap, we can't let any demon take possession of a mutant hybrid," Castiel admonished, suddenly reappearing on the ground between the two trees Sam and Dean were perched on.

"But look at that!" Dean hissed, motioning to the shit show in front of them. "You expect us to go against that mob over there? We didn't exactly pack any machine guns or grenades."

Sam sighed as he lowered the binoculars and frowned at the scene in front of him. What either of them would give for an RPG right then. Castiel could teleport to Aria, get her out, and then _fire_. Boom. No more auction. Sure, no more Magic Kingdom anymore either, but that was the price Florida would have to pay to keep a demon from wreaking havoc and hell in a mutant meat suit.

"There's no way we're plowing through that army head-on," Sam muttered.

"What we need is a diversion," Dean said.

And then they turned to each other. And smirked. Their gazes simultaneously dropped down to the angel, who looked up at them suspiciously. Dean chuckled and put his eye back to the scope.

"What?" Castiel asked, brows deeply furrowed.

Sam stifled a grin. "You're gonna be doing some running."

* * *

The curly-haired bastard finally turned away from Aria to face the crowd at his feet. He adjusted his immaculate black tuxedo, smirking at the successful turnout. The low hum of voices quieted in the tangible anticipation of the air.

The bastard grinned and raised his arms to welcome his fellow bastards. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls—welcome to the first annual demon auction!"

"Original," Dean scoffed under his breath as the crowd cheered and applauded.

"We have gathered here today in the Happiest Place on Earth so that one of you lucky bitches can make sure you can keep sticking around to enjoy whatever happiness will be left on earth!" the demon continued, eliciting several laughs.

"Get on with it!" an impatient Scotsman hollered.

"What's under the tarp?!" a Russian demanded.

The auctioneer laughed and snapped his fingers. Two other demons in matching black suits came up to either side of the tarp.

"Today is not only monumental because this is our first-ever auction," the bastard explained, his eyes turning pitch black in his excitement. "It's also because the host you are all going to be vying for has never been seen before. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you—_my angel_."

The two henchmen yanked the tarp down to reveal Aria, bloody and unconscious with her wrists and ankles bound with plastic ties. She hung from a rope tied to the arch above her. Her black wings hung limply, the red tips brushing the floor of the dais—and were now _literally_ dipped in blood. The crowd gasped and murmured to themselves, some pointing and others craning their necks to get a better look.

"Is this a joke?!"

"She can't be real!"

"You just duct-taped a pair of Victoria Secret wings on her!"

The bastard's smirk grew as he motioned to one of his henchmen, who nodded and suddenly reached out to yank Aria's right wing—_hard_. She woke up with a bloodcurdling scream, effectively silencing the doubting mass. Hissing in the shock of the pain, her head snapped in the direction of the curly-haired asshole.

Dean didn't see the murderous look Aria gave the demon, but he _did_ see the huge wad of blood she spat in his face—quite the distance since it traveled from one dais to the other and still maintained enough force to make the bastard's head snap back.

But he only laughed and wiped the blood off his cheek with a handkerchief he produced from the pocket of his jacket. "Welcome back to the land of the living, sweetheart."

"Let me down and I'll give you a proper welcome, asswipe," she growled through clenched teeth.

Either she wasn't as injured as she looked or she had an extremely high tolerance for pain because the amount of blood dripping off her should've had her limp and weak. Further discounting Dean's assumptions, her bound legs suddenly swung around to slam into the chest of the demon on her right, sending the brute flying off the stage. She swung her legs around again, smashing them into the face of the demon on the left, who tumbled off the railing and off the back of the stage. She heaved her legs up to hook onto the arch, and she was about to twist and swing so as to tip over the arch and send it down, but four big demons converged to yank her down and punch her in the face and stomach. She sagged back into her former position, coughing up blood.

"_Damn,"_ Dean muttered in approval.

The bastard threw his head back and laughed. "See, ladies and gentlemen?!" he crowed, turning back to the crowd. "She's a feisty one—a _fighter_! It took a grand total of _thirty demons_ to subdue her when she was first captured! A body like this is _sure_ to survive this impending Apocalypse.

The crowd rippled, thoroughly impressed at the demonstration.

The bastard grinned hugely, positively orgasmic at the reactions he was getting. "So shall we start the bidding at—"

He was suddenly cut off when he spotted a man in a trench coat coming up behind the demons all the way in the back of the crowd and slitting their throats, stabbing them in the backs, or pressing his palms against their foreheads and incinerating the demons in their hosts. Flickers of red and white light flashed across the faces of Castiel's victims as he viciously slashed and banished demons left and right.

"He's got Ruby's knife!" someone in the crowd yelled.

Finally ceasing his rampage, the angel turned and bolted, and the entirety of the crowd gave chase, thundering down the road into Tomorrowland. Momentarily abandoning his job as distraction, Castiel teleported back to Sam's hiding place, an automated external defibrillator station near the stage of the castle, to hand the taller man Ruby's knife before reappearing in front of the mob and leading them further away.

Thunder exploded across the sky, and a few threatening drops of rain smacked into the ground loudly. Meanwhile, Dean was using the rifle to pick off whatever stragglers decided to stick around while Sam dashed out from behind the AED station and vaulted himself up onto the stage. He slashed the throat of the demon guarding her left, stabbing a second in the forehead, and then gutted a third. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Aria heaved her legs again and kicked the other remaining demon off the stage.

"Sam, behind you!" she barked.

The tuxedoed bastard had lunged, armed with his own knife. He nearly took off Sam's hand, but the latter managed to leap out of the way.

"Look, Winchester, this isn't your fight," the demon explained patronizingly, raising his voice over the torrential downpour that suddenly crashed down around them. "I'll even let you go. All I want is the girl."

Sam didn't even respond as he moved to stand between the demon and Aria with a dark, poisonous glare.

The demon shook his head and chuckled. "Suit yourself."

With a simple wave of his hand, Sam flew off the platform. Lightning flashed as he hit the ground, and stars swam in his eyes as he struggled to stay conscious. He gripped Ruby's knife tighter and pushed himself to his feet, but it was too late.

A rifle shot echoed over the thunder and the rain, but it missed. That small error in aim meant the knife in the demon's hand was embedded to the hilt in Aria's stomach.

"NO!" Sam bellowed, throwing himself back onto the stage.

Aria glared at the demon defiantly—no sign of pain on her face. The bastard smiled briefly before wrenching the knife out and cutting the rope that held her to the arch. In the time it took Sam to get within two feet of Aria, the bastard had cut the ties that bound her wrists and ankles, seized her by the throat, and vomited the black smoke that began to seep into Aria's mouth.

"SHIT!" Dean roared from the trees as he jumped off the branch and hit the ground running.

The newly-possessed Aria shoved the unconscious, curly-haired body off her and stood up, brushing off dirt and wiping her bloody hands on her torn jeans. She smiled at Sam sweetly, her eyes completely black.

"Now see what you made me—" She froze mid-sentence and grabbed her head, grimacing in pain.

Sam stared in confusion as Dean ran up to them. Aria's eyes clamped her eyes shut and dropped to her knees, screaming in pain as she clutched the sides of her head, rocking back and forth.

Dean gaped at her and then glanced at Sam. "What are you—"

"I'm not doing this, Dean!" Sam cried, taking a step toward her.

"Then what the hell is happening?!"

Another bloodcurdling scream ripped out of her throat before she bent over and pressed her forehead against the floor of the stage. When she finally snapped back upright, her no-longer-black-eyes locked onto Dean's.

"Jazz Hands, grab me one of the defibrillators from the station!" she shrieked, using her nickname for Dean to try and convince them it was really her.

"_Aria?!" _Sam cried in shock.

"DO IT!" she screeched at Dean, who immediately jumped and sprinted to the station, kicking open the door and reappearing five seconds later, armed with the black and yellow contraption. He tossed it up to Sam, who passed it to Aria.

Clamping her eyes shut and clenching her teeth in pain, she ripped off her shirt, peeled off the electrodes, and slapped them onto her left ribs and over her right collarbone. The stab wound over her stomach continued to gush with every ragged breath she took, and her blood mingled with water as the rain washed some of it away.

"Aria, it's _raining_! You're going to—"

But Sam wasted his breath. She smashed her fist onto the yellow exterior of the defibrillator, and it sparked. But it was nothing compared to the violent seizure that tore through Aria's body. Her skin and hair began to smoke and smolder as she screamed through her teeth.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Dean roared, staring up at the half-naked girl who'd just electrocuted herself.

She ripped off the electrodes, twitching in the residual electricity, and braced herself on her hands and knees, panting. Her lap was dark with the blood that continued to stream out of her wound, but Sam and Dean could do nothing but stare in shock, eyes wide and mouths agape. Aria leaned her head back, gasping for air, before she finally pushed herself up onto her feet and staggered off the stage. She stumbled toward Sam and stopped in front of him. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound escaped.

"That knife…_kills_ demons for real…right?" she whispered hoarsely, swaying on her feet. "It won't just…knock 'em out or something?"

Sam could smell the smoke on her skin in spite of the rain. "Yes, but—"

Her hands reached out to wrap around his hand—the one that held Ruby's knife. She smiled up at him, and right when he realized what she was about to do, she slammed the knife into her stomach, right below her diaphragm. Red light flickered in her mouth and eyes before she pulled on Sam's wrist, yanking the knife out. She blinked at him twice before pitching forward into his arms.

Castiel appeared beside Dean, looking ravaged and bedraggled. Blood leaked out of the corner of his mouth, and what looked to be a portion of someone's intestine was flung over his shoulder.

"Let's get outta here!" Dean ordered, shouldering the duffel bag of weapons and then climbing up onto the stage with Castiel behind him. Sam gently hefted Aria into his arms, following his brother up. The angel grabbed both Winchesters by the shoulder, and all four of them vanished.


	4. Cinderella and Boxers

**4  
**_**Cinderella and Boxers**_

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

_To say Sam Winchester looked shocked would've been a gross understatement of an understatement. Disturbed would be a better adjective anyway. "_Three_ times? W-Why?"_

_Aria's eyebrow shot up condescendingly. "Do you know anything about birds? They need a hell of a lot of calories in order to have enough energy to fly."_

"_How much do you need?" he asked, seemingly unsure of whether or not he really wanted to know._

"_About three or four thousand a day. Sometimes I've gone up to six thousand. It depends on what I do, what my mood is, and what kind of food I'm eating."_

"Sixthousand_ calories a _day_?!" he cried. _

"Mutanthybrid_, remember?" she reminded him. "Besides, that's not nearly as bad as the others."_

"_Others?" he echoed, urging her to go on._

_She didn't go for it. "_Others_."_

"_You're…just gonna leave it at that?" he asked with a hesitant smile._

"_I'm not the only mutant," she pointed out blandly._

_He raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I got that."_

_She broke eye contact and shuffled on the chair, trying to end the conversation, but Sam wasn't to be deterred. He wasn't the most persistent bastard she'd encountered, but she certainly didn't want to see exactly how persistent he could get. _

"_So how is it that you manage to take flight with those wings?" he asked suddenly. She frowned as he continued. "I mean, from what I've gauged, those things aren't as heavy as they look. It'd be virtually impossible to take off with the normal human mass with wings that light without gale-force winds."_

_When she wasn't forthcoming with any information, he shifted and kept going._

"_Not to mention the issue of steering. If you didn't plummet straight down, you'd be buffeted back and forth. But since you managed to stay airborne, and it's not even a windy night, I'd say your bones must be light, right? Or are your wings stronger than they look? No, that doesn't make sense."_

_He continued to ramble on and on about _bones_. _Bones._ Yes, _fucking bones._ It was ridiculous. He managed to find nearly a thousand theories about how she managed to get off the ground within a time span of twenty minutes, and by the time he finally argued himself into a circle in which he finally decided to convince himself it was because her bones were like a bird's, Aria finally cracked._

"Okay_! For God's sake, I have bird bones!" she snapped impatiently, choosing to roll her eyes at Sam's smug expression. "They seem smaller and should seem lighter, but they've got a much denser composition than normal human bones. That's why I managed to kick Trench Coat's ass without cracking my own skeleton in the process."_

"_So that contributes to the high caloric intake?" he clarified. "Because of high energy expenditure?"_

_She didn't see how her bones and high energy expenditure correlated, but whatever. "Because of high energy expenditure, sure."_

"_You should see Dean eat," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling at some spot on the carpet. "Especially when there's pie in front of him."_

_She scoffed. "Like a pig in a trough?"_

"_More like a _zombie_," he corrected her._

_Aria threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, no, no, you have never seen a zombie eat."_

"_And _you_ have?" he teased._

_She smirked, leisurely leaning back with a smirk. "Oh, yes, I have."_

_The smile was wiped off Sam's face as he saw exactly how serious she was in spite of her smirk. "A-Are you serious? A real zombie? Flesh-eating, gimpy gait, and everything?"_

_She nodded once. "I told you, Sam. I'm not the only mutant, and I'm most _definitely_ not the only experiment."_

"_Are you telling me that the government produced a zombie?"_

"_Among other things," she answered bitterly._

_But he wasn't about to let that little piece of disturbing information go. "On purpose?"_

"_As far I as I know? No, but one can never be sure about government agendas," she said nonchalantly. "They could very well have made one just to see if it could be done__—__to see if a Zombie Apocalypse was something to be feared."_

"_And it is," he said flatly._

_She nodded. "It is."_

_He sighed, and ran a hand down his face. "There anything else you wanna share? Any sphinxes? Centaurs?"_

"_Zombies aren't mythical creatures, dimwit," she reminded him teasingly. "Don't confuse _DawnoftheDead_ with _TheChroniclesofNarnia_."_

"_For a government-made mutant, you seem pretty well-versed in pop culture."_

"_We didn't train _all_ the time," she said, slightly affronted. _

"_Wait__—_train_? Train for _what_?"_

Shit_._

_She mentally berated herself for slipping up, but she refused to let it show._

"_Aria, what were you trained for?" he asked, pleading for her to elaborate with those puppy-dog eyes._

_When she continued her silence, he gave up on pushing the subject and turned to a different aspect of their previous conversation._

"_So those scientists didn't keep you locked up in cages?" he asked cautiously, choosing his words carefully. _

"_No."_

"_And aside from this…training, were you guys able to do a lot of other things?"_

_She sighed and threw him a bone. "We were kids__—__we tried to occupy ourselves the way normal kids did. Read books, watched bootleg movies, played pranks on each other, etcetera, etcetera."_

"_The others__—__were they like you?"_

"_Mutants?"_

"_Human-avian hybrids."_

_She watched him for a few seconds, gauging whether or not he was genuinely curious or simply collecting information. He didn't blink. _

"_Yeah, they were bird-kids too."_

"_What were they like?"_

_She'd half-expected him to ask things like, "How old were they?" or "How many of you were there?" or even "Where are they now?" So she was just a little bit thrown off that he asked about their personalities. She sat there for another silent couple of seconds, debating with herself about whether or not she should keep talking, but the longer she stared at him and the longer he met her gaze, the less she…_

Hm.

"_They were just like every other kid," she sighed finally. "They were weird and funny, could be moody and temperamental at times, loved to watch movies and read books and play video games."_

"_And these…scientists? They allowed you to play games and…?"_

"_It was either give us entertainment or have a frustrated, volatile, _dangerous_ mutant on their hands, so, yes, they gave us a Playstation, gave us books, movies, decks of cards__—__all that shit."_

"_And were you… Were you happy?"_

"_As happy as a lab rat could get, yeah, sure. The others made it better for me."_

"_What do you mean?" Sam asked, keeping his tone light so as to not push her. She appreciated it. "They…protected you?"_

_She hesitated and then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, they did."_

"_Why?"_

"_I was the baby of the group," she finally answered, feeling just a little pang of defeat at having surrendered some crucial information._

_Sam's brows furrowed in concern. "How much younger were you? And the government was training you already?"_

_Her eyes narrowed at the implications of the last part of his sentence. She'd slipped up big time by mentioning the training. If she was right__—__which she almost always was, anyway__—__then he must've already figured out exactly what they'd been training her for. Coupled with the way she'd fought Castiel, it wouldn't be hard to put two and two together._

_To hell with it._

"_I was only two years younger than the second-youngest," she answered. "And we'd been doing missions since I was seven. Don't look so disturbed."_

"Seven_?! But__—__how did you manage it?!"_

"_We all had our parts to play in the team," she explained. "I never had any hands-on roles until I was old enough. They sent us out on missions, but we were still a priceless instrument for them. They wouldn't risk our well-beings unless it was something incredibly important, and even then, we always had a fully-human team waiting on standby in case something went wrong."_

"_And you were trained?" he persisted. _

"_By the best."_

_He gave her this look that had her skin prickling. "But were you scared?"_

_She stared up at him__—__at those hazel-green eyes that he and his brother shared. Eyebrows furrowed in worry, mouth set in an anxious line, jaw twitching…_

"_No."_

* * *

Burning aches were what slowly brought her out of the black haze of unconsciousness. She didn't stir or move on whatever bed she'd been set on—she didn't want to alert whomever was watching to the fact that she was awake yet. The burning would only get worse, but if she managed to keep a lid on it, she wouldn't have to divulge even more information that they simply _did not need to know_.

So she lay there, cursing the shitheads who'd done this to her—those labcoat-wearing sons of bitches who were to blame for driving her to insanity and beyond.

Because that's the only reason why she managed to survive the excruciatingly obscene amount of pain she'd been forced to endure these last few years—hell, these last few _days_. She was already batshit crazy, so no amount of pain could make it worse anymore.

She'd once been fairly nonviolent. She loved flowers, puppies, kittens, and fluffy little bunnies whose noses twitched like Thumper's. She only broke out the roundhouse kicks and sucker punches when necessary. But every time she dwelled on the shit those probe-poking degenerates put her through, she wanted to stomp on chicks and throw puppies into wood chippers.

So when she'd rammed her fist into the defibrillator, she was merely intending to push the "shock" button, but she'd been just so _damn_ pissed off at everything in her life that she unintentionally punched the stupid thing. Fortunately, it still had the desired effect.

Frankly, she was surprised she hadn't gotten struck by lightning in the process too. But that would've been overkill. Sam and Dean were probably already scared shitless enough. Had her electricity-addled brain not been roasting in pain, she would've laughed at the expressions on their faces. She honestly hadn't expected them to be as surprised as they were—especially after all they'd been through already. The history of the Winchester boys was just a series of nightmares one right after the other with the occasional manic or hallucinatory episode interpolated here and there.

Shapeshifters? Wendigos? Flesh-eating ghosts—ghouls? Demon blood-infected children? Spirits of hook-handed priests who abhorred sins of the flesh? _Bloody Mary_?!

Just _hearing_ the occasional reference in Sam's general overview of their lives was enough to induce nightmares for the rest of her short, pathetic life. She hadn't actually believed him at the time—back when Dean had been off on the food run. But now, after seeing all those demons and suffering through all the shit they'd put her through, it just _sunk in_.

And it scared the shit out of her.

She'd been lying in the trunk of that fuckwit's car, reminiscing about how in the ever-loving hell she found herself in this new predicament, and the next thing she knew, she was clamping her eyes shut against wave after wave of hot tears and gulping breath after breath to keep herself from screaming in a meltdown.

_Demons_ had _kidnapped her_ and were planning on _using_ her body to survive the _Apocalypse._

Even for a mutant freak, this was a shitload to swallow.

You know what else was hard to swallow?

Pain—white-hot, burning, searing, _I-am-being-deep-fried_ kind of pain.

Gritting her teeth and steadfastly keeping her face completely blank to maintain the guise of sleep, Aria was having an increasingly difficult time keeping herself from screaming bloody murder at the intense amount of _pain_ in her torso and in her wings.

Until she finally cracked.

Fuck this.

Sam jerked awake from his hunched position at the dining table as soon as the first sound of her combined scream/growl. He bolted to her side, pushing her shoulders back down on to the bed so she wouldn't curl into a ball and ruin her stitches. Dean had jumped up off the other bed and came to stand on the other side of her bed to hold down her legs.

"Aria! Aria, what's wrong?!" Sam demanded, still struggling to hold her down. Her back arched as she tried to push the weight off her burning wings. "Aria—Aria, honey, it's okay. It's oka—"

"She's not freaking out 'cause of demons, Sam—this is _pain_!" Dean barked. "Aria, _breathe_! Come on! Breathe, goddamnit!"

Eventually the white noise in her ears faded enough for her to hear her own breath hissing through her teeth as the residual _agony_ began to ebb. Her breathing slowed, and she finally managed to unlock her jaw and unclench her teeth. She didn't relinquish her death grip on the mattress, but she'd relaxed enough for the Winchesters to let go.

Her eyes opened slowly, taking in the dim light of the motel room. She noted the distinct lack of retro furniture and trench coat-clad angel.

"You were stabbed _twice_, and _God_ only knows how much blood you lost. You should be _dead and_ _cold_ right now," Dean said, breaking through the silence. "Even Cas tried to heal you, but for some fucked-up reason, it wasn't working."

She groaned and shifted on the bed so she wasn't lying on her back and adding unnecessary pressure on her aching wings. "Did you forget the whole mutant-thing?" she grumbled, wincing and grimacing as she turned. "I'm practically an abomination to nature. I guess it makes sense he can't do shit. Besides…" She groaned and took a break from adjusting herself. "Scientists like to experiment, and I was the lucky bitch who won the super-regeneration."

"Regeneration?" Dean echoed in disbelief. "Like a starfish?"

She didn't have the energy to shoot back some sarcastic comment. "I don't regenerate limbs. I just heal a lot faster than normal people. If you chop off an arm or a finger, it ain't coming back."

"But it's not…instantaneous, right?"

She gingerly lifted up the black shirt she was wearing to peer into the bloody gauze wrapped around her middle. "Almost, but not quite."

"Holy fuck," Dean mumbled under his breath as he leaned over to see the partially-healed stab wounds

"Wait, what about the stitches?" Sam asked, pulling back the gauze in order to let her closed-over wounds air out for a few minutes. "I think we can leave them in for a few more hours."

"No," she said, gingerly touching the edge of the cut. "You may as well take them out now. Stitches help me heal faster."

He sat down on the edge of her bed and pulled out the first aid kit from the bedside table. Dean pulled off the rest of the gauze and tossed it in the trash as Sam pulled out the scissors and tweezers and bent over her stomach to start pulling out the stitches. If he noticed how she'd tensed at his touch, he didn't let on. She didn't have much time to dwell on that, though, as she defiantly ignored the eye-twitchingly weird sensation of the thread being pulled out of her skin. She'd always hated stitches.

"Where are we?" she asked, pointedly staring at the ceiling and the nasty-ass water stain on it.

Dean vanished into the bathroom to wash his hands, but his voice still carried out into the main room. "Still in Florida. Had to fix you up quick before all your guts spilled out."

She blanched. "_Were_ my guts spilling out?"

Sam chuckled, his warm breath brushing over the skin of her stomach and making her skin break out in goosebumps. If he didn't notice that, he was blind and should not be tinkering around her wounds, but once again, he didn't let on.

"No," he said instead, "the only thing that was coming out was blood—and a lot of it."

Something in his tone had her eyes moving away from the ceiling and to his face.

She could sense something about him—something that he'd left out when they'd talked back in the other motel. He was like Vance: broken, but the pieces weren't all laid out. Some were hidden or shattered beyond recognition. And even though these two did a good job of keeping up appearances, she knew that there was a rift between them. She'd spent enough time with Vance and Paul to familiarize herself with that kind of tension.

Dean cleared his throat from the doorway of the bathroom, and her eyes trailed up to his just in time to see the corner of his mouth twitch in a smile. He'd seen her watching Sam.

Shit.

The tugging stopped at her stomach, and she looked down to see Sam throwing away the stitches in the nearby trash bin.

"There—you're done," he announced, heading into the bathroom to take his turn washing his hands.

"Thanks," she muttered, pushing her shirt back down.

Then she finally noticed.

This was not her shirt. She wasn't one to wear skin-tight outfits, but the shirts she chose for herself weren't quite this loose either. It covered the barest minimum, but it still skimmed the tops of her thighs enough to make it extremely uncomfortable being in the room with them. But she didn't say anything about it because these two were nice enough to lend her one and have it all bloodied up.

Until she shifted her legs under the covers and realized she wasn't wearing any pants either.

She cleared her throat and did her best to keep her voice from shaking. "Where are my clothes?"

It was a testament to the state their lives were in that neither of them blushed. In fact, Dean winked at her lecherously. Sam, at least, had the decency to look a little guilty. But not nearly enough to make her feel any better.

"Don't you remember?" Dean reminded her teasingly. "You ripped off your shirt back in Disney—before you tried to commit suicide the first time."

Aria winced but didn't dispute him. It technically was suicide. Technically.

"Then when we got here," Dean continued nonchalantly, "we were trying to fix you up, but you were perforated all over the damn place, so we had to cut off your jeans to really be able to, uh, _assess the damage_."

Her eyes slid up to the ceiling. By far, this wasn't the most compromising position she'd ever gotten herself caught in. But it certainly wasn't a fun, comfortable experience nonetheless.

"You've got the most ridiculous amount of scars either of us have ever seen, by the way," Dean added. "And in our line of work, my saying that should mean a hell of a lot."

Aria scoffed, unimpressed. "This is nothing. You should've seen Paul." Then she cleared her throat and changed the subject. "I kinda liked those jeans, by the way."

"Hey, at least we didn't take off your underwear!" Dean snapped defensively. Then he blushed. Finally.

"Yes," she agreed lamely. "Fortunately you didn't have to do that."

He scowled. "This how you thank us for saving your life? We thought we'd saved your skinny ass just so you could die, you know that? Had us all nervous you weren't gonna wake up in the morning."

She frowned at him. "That your version of saying you were worried about me?"

He shot her a longsuffering look before going to the mini-fridge. He bent to grab a beer bottle, but he hesitated when he saw that she was watching him with one raised eyebrow.

"You do realize it's five in the morning, right?"

He exaggeratedly pulled out a bottle and made a show of popping the top off and taking a long, dramatic swig. "I need to recover after watching you shock and then stab yourself. You're a suicidal weirdo, you know that? Forget the wings and the crazy-mutant healing crap. You're just a weirdo in general."

"Aria, why _did_ you shock yourself?" Sam asked from where he was still sitting next to her. Her entire right side was warm just having him there.

She sighed and rubbed her forehead for a few seconds. "When a lightning storm hits, it messes with the part of my brain that deals with my tracking ability," she began. "At first, it just threw my sense of direction out of whack, but it's escalated. I don't understand how or why—it's just another glitch that came with the upgrades. It didn't start until about two months ago, and I stumbled on the remedy when a headache hit me when I was flying and I smashed into a transformer."

"What happens when you can't electrocute yourself?" Sam asked, ignoring his brother.

"The pain gets so bad to the point of me blacking out, and I don't wake up until three days after the storm passes," she replied, a little too blasé.

"So either you avoid lightning storms or stay near something that can electrocute you?" Sam clarified.

She nodded once. So much for getting out of these boys' hair without giving them too much information. She'd gone and told them about 60% of her secrets, and it hadn't even been a week.

Dean frowned down at his bottle, swirling the amber liquid contemplatively. "Why exactly did the demons think it'd be a brilliant idea to auction you off at Disney World anyway?"

"I only got snippets of the plan from what I heard from the trunk of the car they stashed me in," she replied, narrowing her eyes and sneering at the memory. "It wasn't a straight-up auction in the first place. Tom was never gonna give me away."

"Tom?" Dean queried.

"The scumbag who kidnapped me and tried to sell me off to the highest bidder," Aria answered, surprised that some smart-aleck retort didn't pop out like it normally did. Hm. Jazz Hands was growing on her. "I know it had something to do with Cinderella's Castle. He said something in passing about magic, and considering the situation, I'm assuming it's got nothing to do with turning pumpkins into carriages or _Avada Kedavra_-ing people and everything to do with…_your kind_ of magic."

She caught Sam's smile at her Harry Potter reference, and she winked in reply. Thankfully Dean was too engrossed in her newly-supplied information to notice.

"But Cinderella's Castle?! _Cinderella?!_"

She rolled her eyes. "Why don't you guys research it or something? Isn't that what you do? Research whatever lore or legend might be tied into the town or situation you're dealing with?"

"Did you tell her _everything_?" Dean accusingly hissed at Sam, who scowled and stood up to grab his laptop off the table.

Aria would deny to the depths of hell itself that she did a mental happy jig when he came over and sat back down in his previous seat—_right next to her—_and proceeded with his research.

"What exactly are you gonna Google?" she asked. "_'Cinderella's Castle lore mystery?'_"

"Further research will not be necessary."

All three of them jumped when Castiel suddenly materialized in the middle of the room, tie still askew and coat still rumpled.

Sam glanced at her with a sheepish smile. "You never get used to it."

She smirked, and he dimpled back at her. Then she stiffened when she felt Dean's eyes on her face, and cleared her throat awkwardly before turning back to the angel.

The older Winchester shot her a weird look but shook his head with a sigh. "You find out anything about Tim's—"

"Tom," she corrected him.

"—the _shitwad's _plans?" Dean finished.

"Yes," the angel answered in his gravelly voice. "From what I gathered, the creator of the park had made a deal with, erm, _Tom_, a crossroads demon. Oh, and I also brought your car."

She flashed back on her crash course in demonology, courtesy of the younger Mr. Winchester, as Dean rushed to the motel window to see his beloved Impala sitting in the space right in front of the room.

"Walt Disney sold his soul?" Aria sighed despondently.

Sam snorted. "For _what_?"

She wished she could say that she was just as skeptical of Walt Disney's business dealings, but frankly, at this point in her ludicrous life, nothing could surprise her anymore. "Let me guess," she deadpanned. "He sold his soul for an imagination that could dream up the most amazing stories to bring happiness and joy to the hearts of every child in the world and eventually bring it all to life in a theme park that made dreams come true, even for a day."

Castiel narrowed his eyes at her. "Essentially, yes, but his intentions weren't quite that noble."

She blinked._ Nope, still not surprised._

Sam glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before turning back to the conversation. "Didn't Disney die of lung cancer?"

"Apparently Tom was quite partial to the stories and actually enjoyed the park. He let Disney die of different means rather than being torn asunder by the traditional hellhound method," Castiel answered blandly.

"Well, wasn't that kind of him? What the hell does it have to do with why _Todd_ was in Disney World?" Dean snapped impatiently.

"The deal was that all Disney had to do was build a center of attraction and mark it with a symbol—it had to be big and would bring together large amounts of people," Castiel explained—still not flat-out answering the question.

"Cinderella's Castle," Aria said.

The angel nodded.

"But there are two of them," Sam pointed out. "One in Anaheim—in Disney_land_—and the other in Orlando—in Disney _World_. Disney World wasn't built 'til after Disney died, so the mark should be on the other castle. Why did Tom go to Orlando?"

"Disney World began to attract more attention since it was bigger," Castiel said. "Tom simply took whatever block or brick the symbol was etched on and transported it to the castle in Orlando since it served the same purpose anyway."

Dean sat down at the foot of Aria's bed and ran his hand through his hair. "What does the symbol do?"

"It works like a shtriga," Castiel answered.

Dean visibly stiffened, and Sam's frown deepened. When he saw Aria's confused expression, he explained, "A shtriga is a witch who feeds on _spiritus vitae_—"

"Life spirit?" Aria offered, her mediocre Latin skills kicking in.

"Breath of life," Sam corrected her. "But close enough. It preys on children. Dean and I…actually got caught up with one twice. Once when we were kids and then again when we finally got rid of it."

"So you're telling us that the _castle_ is sucking the life out of the thousands of little kids who come to visit that place every day?!" Dean demanded. "That's bullshit!"

"It works on a less aggressive level, Dean," Castiel said. "It seems to only take a small percentage. It's why every child falls asleep in the car ride home or quickly falls asleep once they reach either home or the hotel they are occupying."

Sam, Dean, and Aria gave him identical skeptical looks.

"Well, _obviously_. They wear themselves out by jumping and running around and screaming all day. It's a _theme park,_ for crying out loud," Aria said. "They're _kids_ hopped up on a Disney high. What'd you expect?"

"That's why it's so ingenious," the angel insisted. "It takes such a small amount that it's hardly even distinguishable from normal biological responses, but since there's such a massive influx of children coming to the park every day, the amount of _spiritus vitae_ stored must be enormous."

Sam rubbed his forehead wearily. "The _castle_ is sucking up kids' life energy?"

"The castle simply acts as a sponge or a storage compartment," Castiel said. "Anyone can take from its stores."

"But what does this have to do with the demon auction?" Dean asked, trying to redirect their derailed train of a conversation.

"Tom was planning on finally tapping into those stores and hoarding it all together. By absorbing that much life energy, he would've achieved immortality."

Dean sighed. "What did he need immortality for? He was a _demon_, for God's sake."

"Wait, if he never intended on actually selling Aria, he must've had plans to use her body for himself," Sam said.

She grimaced at his wording, and he sent her another apologetic look as he set the laptop in her lap as he stood up and started pacing. Aria herself could practically see the cogs clicking into place and turning 'round and 'round.

"Remember what he said on stage?" he continued. "She'd be able to survive the Apocalypse itself. He was gonna be the one to possess Aria and use the immortality to ensure her _mortal_ body's survival—like a contingency plan in case she actually wouldn't be able to live through Lucifer's takeover."

Dean nodded, frowning in concentration. "But that doesn't explain why he would be auctioning her off. Why didn't he just take her and then use the castle? Why'd he have to drag out a couple hundred other demons? Did he just want a show or something?"

Castiel's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "_Souls_. He would need souls. Immortality burns through mortal bodies quickly. He would need the life essences of souls to make sure Aria's body wouldn't fade into ash."

"Is that the recipe for immortality then?" Aria asked contemplatively. "_Spiritus vitae_ and souls?"

"The demons that had come were all exclusively crossroads demons," Castiel continued.

"They would've collected a bunch of souls each," Sam muttered, still deep in thought.

"So I was right before. They _were_ auctioning Aria off for souls," Dean stated triumphantly.

"He would've pretended to sell Aria to whomever was willing to cough up the most souls, and he would've ended up killing that demon and taking the souls, possessing Aria, absorbing the _spiritus vitae_ out of the castle, and he would've been set for the rest of eternity," Sam almost growled.

Wow.

They were _pros _at this. That was a pretty badass brainstorming session right there. She would never have pieced all that together in a thousand years. Then again, she only knew a fraction of an insignificant percentage of what they already knew, so she was hardly the best candidate for the job, but regardless.

"So now that you've figured out the dead demon's plan, what are we gonna do?" she asked into the following silence.

Sam quirked an eyebrow. "_We_?"

Dean stood up and gave her a stern look that had her rolling her eyes. _Oh, here we go_. "_Sam, Cas, and I _are going back to that godforsaken hellhole you people call the happiest place on earth and _burn down_ that damn castle if need be. _You_ are gonna stay here where you won't get caught up in any more apocalyptic contingency plans."

Aria huffed, not entirely oblivious of the defensive stances the Winchesters had suddenly taken. They'd braced themselves for some sort of argument about how she was a part of this and shouldn't be left behind.

"'We' is a collective noun, you numbnuts," she said slowly, enunciating each syllable. "It means as a whole. I've been fucking electrocuted, stabbed, and beat up. I ain't goin' nowhere with you."

Sam relaxed and covered his mouth to keep from laughing, but Dean just looked confused.

"You're not…gonna put up a fight or anything?"

Aria shrugged. "I'm not that type of girl, _hombre_. If I can sit shit out, you can be damn sure, I'll sit it out."

Dean finally smiled a little and chortled. He walked over to his duffel bag, took one last gulp of his beer, and pulled out two bags of salt, weighing them in his hands.

"So what exactly are you gonna do?" she asked. "Waltz back into Magic Kingdom and set the castle on fire in the middle of park hours? In case you haven't realized: it's _Saturday_. The _weekend_. You know how many people are gonna be there?"

Dean scoffed, ripping open one of the bags and crossing over to the wall to start pouring a salt line around the room. "First of all, we're just gonna find that damned symbol. Then we'll figure out what we're gonna do with it."

"So should I do anything from here? Research symbols online or something?" Aria asked.

Dean chuckled, still pouring the salt. "You'd be useless on that front since you wouldn't know what we're looking for. Hell, _we_ don't even know what we're looking for."

Sam nudged the first aid kit closer to her on the bedside table. "Just…take the opportunity to sit and relax for a bit."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Relax. Drink some beer. Watch some porn."

Aria scowled and debated throwing something at him. But then she decided it wasn't worth the effort. Instead, she propped herself up against the headboard and crossed her arms over her chest.

"I _do_ need you to promise me something first," she said.

"Yes, Aria, sweetheart. We'll get you a Mickey Mouse ears hat."

The motel pen lying on the bedside table smacked the older Winchester right in the forehead.

"OW!"

"Suck it up!"

"Fine—what do you want?!"

"Try—for the love of God, _please_ try—not to get into any fights with those demons," she said flatly. "Just don't take them on without me, okay? For one thing, the asses of those wing-wrenching Neanderthals are _mine_, but primarily, guys, this is mostly my fault."

Sam stepped forward and moved to rest his hand on her shin. Dude needed to _stop touching her_. "Aria—"

"No, shut up," she said. "I'm not saying that 'cause I wanna redeem myself or some shit. I just don't want you going in there without backup especially when most of this is my fault. I shouldn't have knocked y'all out and left. I wouldn't have been possessed if I'd stayed."

"Damn right," Dean groused.

This time, the motel notepad went flying.

"Woman! Stop throwing shit at me!"

Honestly, it was just too fun, though. "Then promise you won't go looking for a fight."

"It's not your fault," Sam insisted. "We're the ones who got you tangled up in this."

She rolled her eyes for the eight-hundredth time. "Then call it revenge and label it mine. Do not engage until I'm there. Promise? If you walk into a middle of a war, then by all means, go nuts. I'm just saying—don't plan shit without me."

"Why is that such a big deal to you?" Dean asked, finishing up the salt line and straightening up to frown at her.

"Because regardless of who got me involved in this mess, they're the ones who threw me into this whole for _real_. Kidnapped me, beat me up, and want me as a prize," she explained blandly. "So if they want me in this world, I'll _be_ in this world."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look and then nodded at her.

"Fine," Dean conceded. "We'll be back before nightfall. There's beer and some sandwiches in the fridge, _Casa Erotica_ on the TV, and the remote's under your pillow. Have a nice day, birdbrain."

With one last evil smirk from Dean, a stiff nod from Castiel, and an awkward smile from Sam, they finally left, slamming the door behind them.

Aria let out a breath and flipped off the covers. She braced her elbows against the mattress and pushed herself up into a sitting position, almost crying out in pain when fire shot through her chest and stomach. Stitches or not, regeneration was a bitch. She swung her legs over the side of the bead and groaned her way up to standing, swaying as blood rushed down from her head and sparkles of light tangoed across her eyes. As soon as she was steady again, she wobbled over to the bag on the couch she knew to be Sam's. Dean's was closer, but she wasn't gonna rifle through his stuff and risk finding certain things she could live without seeing. She zipped open Sam's duffel and sifted through his pants and shirt to yank out a pair of plain gray boxers.

_Yes, _boxers. She wasn't used to walking around in just a T-shirt and underwear, all right? She needed pants, and since there was no way in hell she was gonna yank on a pair of jeans, she was gonna settle for boxers.

What she failed to realize, however, was the pain of bending down to pull them up. She almost shrieked and wound up collapsed on the couch, trying not to clutch at her stomach. Vance always did chew her out for not thinking small things through.

So she consigned herself to spending the rest of the day trying to figure out a way to pull on a stupid pair of boxers without torturing herself, but it seemed that the shotgun lying on the table wasn't exactly left behind on purpose. Though why they were planning on lugging around a _shotgun_ at _Disney World_ was just beyond her. So when the door suddenly swung open again, both Sam and Aria froze and stared at each other, his mouth hanging open as she lay on top of his bag on the couch with his _boxers_.

Shit.

"Aria," he said slowly, evenly, as if one wrong word was gonna send her into an emotional tailspin. "What are you doing?"

She sighed and dropped her head back against the couch. "I don't wanna walk around in just my underwear," she answered pathetically. She was in too much pain to even bother blushing.

"You're not even supposed to be _walking around _in the first place," he pointed out, closing the door behind him as he stepped in.

She lifted her head off the back of the couch to watch him curiously. He seemed at a loss for what to do for a few seconds until he finally sighed and straightened up. She stiffened, though, when he strode over to her with this determined look on his face. He bent down close, snaking his arm around her to help her up. Her arm instinctively went around his shoulders, and she pointedly ignored the clean scent of soap on his skin and the fact that his jaw was twitching just inches from her face. He still didn't meet her eye as he tugged the boxers out of her hands and dropped down to one knee.

Her breathing stuttered when he finally looked up at her and held the waistband open.

"Step in," he said, his voice low enough to make her stomach clench.

His breath warmed the skin of her shins. She swallowed and stepped in, careful not to let any part of her bare skin touch his hands. But it was for nothing. Still holding the waistband open, he slowly stood and pulled the boxers up along with him, the knuckles of his thumbs and index fingers trailing all the way up her legs, leaving goosebumps in their wake. The more he straightened up, the harder her nails dug into his shirt, and the darker both their eyes got. He stopped holding the waistband open when he finally reached her hips, but he left his thumbs and index fingers inside, rubbing them against her skin in the smallest of circles as the rest of his fingers rested on her outside the boxers.

She barely even registered how the hand that had been clenched around his shoulder had loosened and moved up to the back of his neck while her other hand wrapped around his…_very_ nice bicep. His face was literally less than two inches from her, and she finally saw exactly how tall Sam really was. She'd gotten used to being right up there in the stratosphere of a guy's average height—a solid 5'9". She could only imagine how much of a giant Sam must've seemed to every other girl, but as she saw and felt his face get progressively closer, she couldn't help thinking that no other girl better get within a distance close enough for them to even think about him.

She'd never really known what _hazel_ looked like until then. Sort of brownish-green with light brown flecks here and there. The morning sun slanting in through the windows turned the flecks gold. His breath drifted across her face—minty fresh—and the tips of their noses were brushing ever-so-slightly. Their lips were only a hair's breadth apart when a horn honked outside.

Dean Winchester, that little shit.

They stood there for a few more seconds, not wanting to let the moment go. Then he bent down, scooped her up, gently set her down on the bed, kissed her forehead, grabbed the shotgun, and walked out without a word.


	5. Souls and Stilettos

**5  
**_**Souls and Stilettos**_

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

A pair of eyelids snapped open. Deep, dark brown eyes flipped into full obsidian orbs in the midday sun. A slow, sultry smirk drifted across the young woman's features—an expression very rarely used.

"Well," she mused aloud, lifting her hands up to admire the smooth, olive skin, "this is new."

There was a moment's hesitation before the lean brunette swung her legs off the side of the bed for the second time that day. She gracefully stood to her feet, scrunching her bare toes into the carpet. There was no wince or grimace of pain—no sign that she even noticed her previous injuries. What she did notice, however, was far more superficial.

She took in the slate gray boxer shorts and the oversized black Zeppelin shirt. As appealing as this may be to a pair of Neanderthals, it was just a disgrace to this body. She looked around, as if searching for some suitable attire, but when her cursory investigation of the room only yielded a thick salt line instead of clothes, her grimace turned into an amused smirk.

"Keeping people out or _in_?" she mused aloud, setting her hands on her hips. Then she blinked, and her smirk became increasingly arrogant. "How could I have possibly forgotten?"

She shook her shoulders and unfolded her wings, admiring the ebony and crimson feathers. Stepping toward the front door, she twisted and experimentally flapped one wing, scattering the salt line until her smirk widened into a full grin.

Those idiots—always making things harder for everyone. She sauntered toward the door and pulled it open. After all, what Tom wants, Tom _always_ gets.

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

Dean chomped into the chocolate Mickey-shaped popsicle and sighed in ecstasy. He reveled at how a three-dollar ice cream could make him feel like he was four years old all over again. He blamed it on some psychological atmosphere type-thing caused by hanging out at _Disney World_ and the insane amount of little kids running around and screaming excitedly. It was rubbing off.

However, the sigh that came from the bigfoot slumped beside him was decidedly less ecstatic. Sam was such a killjoy.

"Dude," Dean said, trying to be as sympathetic as he could while slurping ice cream through a crack in the hard shell, "you've got it so bad."

Okay, maybe that wasn't sympathetic _at all_.

That slapped Sam out of his little funk effectively enough. He sat a little straighter, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning. "You're an idiot."

Dean scowled and snorted. He may not have gone to college, but he wasn't an idiot. Seriously. This whole Dean-not-having-the-perceptive-skills-of-an-orangu tan thing was getting on his nerves. Just 'cause he didn't like talking about _his_ issues didn't mean he wasn't willing to lay out someone else's and make them feel as awkward as possible. _Especially_ if it was about Sam's love life. Or lack thereof.

"So the fact that it took you a good five minutes to grab a shotgun and that you were as mute as frickin' _Ariel_ and blushing as red as her hair when you got out_ totally _meant that I wasn't interrupting anything in there, huh?"

Dean paused, grimacing. They needed to finish this shit up soon. He was spouting Disney references already.

Thankfully, Sam ignored the comparison and rubbed his palms against his jeans.

"See?" Dean continued. "You got it bad, man. You've got it bad for a _mutant_."

"That's not—" Sam sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I'm just worried about her, okay? She comes out of nowhere with a history to rival ours and now she's all caught up in this with a kind of duty-bound attitude to stick with her battles." He glared at Dean. "Don't tell me you're not bothered by it."

Dean shrugged. "I mean, I get it. Once a soldier, always a soldier."

"Of course you're not bothered by it," Sam said. "You get her better than I do 'cause you're practically the same way—dutiful to the point of suicide."

Dean rolled his eyes. Typical Sam. "Calm your ass. I'm just saying I get it, okay? I didn't say that I'm not bothered by it. Aria's a crazy bitch—a _hot_ crazy bitch—and right from the beginning, there's something seriously off about her."

"She's too…battle-ready," Sam said. "A little too eager to get bloodied up, and while I think it's ingrained in her because of her training, I think she's just…given up at this point."

"She said her team are all dead, right?" Dean asked. "Apart from that Ian guy who's probably _malfunctioned_ and keeled over by now?"

"Yeah. Losing people you've trained and fought with—_grown up with_…" Sam raked his hands through his hair. "It broke her. I don't think anyone even needs to know what she was like before to figure out that she's pretty screwed up."

"And you like her," Dean finished with an evil smile. "What does that say about you?"

"Dean, I'm not—"

"Don't even try that with me. Y'all are eye-fucking each other like you're already halfway there," Dean said, finishing off the popsicle. "It's the Apocalypse, Sam."

"Exactly! We don't have time for that sort of thing!" Sam hissed, blushing as a group of fifth graders on a field trip passed by.

"You're such a dumbass—it's the _perfect _time. She's suicidal; it's the Apocalypse. Seize the day."

"You're an idiot."

"You need sex."

"Dean!"

Dean chucked the popsicle stick into the nearby garbage and gestured at the pretty blonde worker approaching them. "There's Sally—but don't you think for a second our little vagina monologue's over. Having Doomsday looming over our heads is a prime time to start getting things done. And suicidal mutant or not, Aria's a—"

"Don't even finish that sentence," Sam growled.

Aria was off-limits.

Not just because she was a mutant or because she was adamant romance was something for people who didn't have specific _deadlines_ hanging over their heads. Not just because she'd made it very clear she wasn't sticking around after all would be said and done or because once she'd leave, he'd never see her again.

It was 'cause he was Lucifer's vessel, and he cared about her too much.

Simple as that.

Call it a bleeding heart, but as soon as she started talking about her team with that dead look in her eyes, he knew he was going to protect her. From what she'd told them, she'd been fighting all her life; it was time someone fought for her. She was just like them: a stubborn-ass who was loyal to a fault but somehow still able to hold everyone at arm's length, whether voluntary or otherwise. She'd be right at home in their rag-tag little family.

And, as lame and overdone a statement it was, she _really_ wasn't like any of the other girls he'd ever met in his life. She was neither oblivious to her sexuality nor confident in it—she didn't_care_ about it, frankly. She had the appetite of a dinosaur but the table manners of a princess. She moved with an innate grace, but her body was scarred and calloused. She weighed as much as a Pringles can, but her punches packed the force of a rhino collision. Her mouth and actions said she'd fight 'til the very end, but her eyes conveyed the plea that all she wanted to do was rest. She very obviously wanted him, and she very obviously didn't want to.

She was beautiful and terrifying, evil but good, dark but light. She was black and white and gray all over—a goddamn pain in the ass that he simply didn't want to let go of because there are certain people that you encounter that a voice in the back of your mind commands you not to let leave.

She didn't change him or turn his world upside-down. Okay, granted, she opened his eyes to a whole new, sick level of science, but it didn't shake his world. She didn't turn on a different light or reposition him to see things from a new perspective.

She was a piece of a different puzzle that still somehow managed to fit in his set.

"Come on! Mr. Quinn gave me the key to the suite, but we can't stay long."

Shaking his head of his thoughts and firmly replanting himself in the (surreal) reality that he was standing in _Disney World_ with his _brother...again_, he and Dean simultaneously stood up and met Sally in the middle of Main Street. She grinned and held up a set of rings and a white key card with the castle logo stamped on the top right corner. She ushered them into the castle and up into Cinderella's Suite.

Upon leaving the motel room, Castiel had disappeared, claiming further research, leaving Sam and Dean to spend a good two hours meandering the perimeter of the castle, searching for any symbols or sigils etched on the bricks before a park worker finally approached them, offering assistance. It was then that they found out the castle hadn't actually been made of bricks, but rather ten-inch-thick reinforced concrete and fiberglass over a steel-braced frame structure. Most of the exterior was actually thick, very hard, fiber-reinforced gypsum plaster supported by light gauge metal studs.

That threw them off for a good hour and a half, during which they decided to try out exactly how good of cuisine "Casey's Corner" had. Then they figured that maybe it didn't have to be _on_ the castle instead—it could be on the bricks of the street it was on or _something_. So they spent another couple of hours looking like fucking lunatics, staring at every brick in on Main Street until they were stopped by _another _park worker, Sally. They finally decided _to hell with it_ and asked her about any legends or secret rooms. With an appreciative look in both brothers' directions, she explained that because Walt Disney had died before construction was completed, the private suite that was reserved for his visits was simply used by phone operators until it was decided that the room would be turned into "Cinderella's Suite," where a few "lucky" guests could have the opportunity of spending the night.

Sam and Dean exchanged a brief glance, silently agreeing that checking it out would be worth a try. Then Dean smirked and worked his charm to earn them a private tour of the suite, courtesy of the leggy blonde. His ridiculous excuse was that he was writing a magical fairytale-type novel and wanted to research a magical room or whatever, but Dean was attractive and she was enough of a hopeless romantic and fairytale buff to believe it. So she batted her eyes and flounced off to ask her manager for the key to the suite, leaving Dean to the vices of an ice cream cone and Sam to the teasing of his brother.

* * *

Dean whistled in appreciation. "It's like we're not even in a freakin' recession!"

Sally led them in through the foyer with the gold-speckled mosaic floor and crystal chandelier and into the suite itself. Two beds, stained glass windows, "secret" TV's hidden in portraits and mirrors, a futon couch, and a ludicrously decorated bathroom that fully explained why admission prices had skyrocketed—the goddamn suite was still pretty small though. They'd been expecting something bigger, wider, and more open. The experience was kind of reminiscent of when they found they found out that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and all those other cartoons were only people in costumes—they weren't real. It was a hell of a disappointment.

Less now that they were two full-grown men and this was just a room, but _still._

"So how exactly did you manage to get your boss to let us in here?" Sam asked, running his hands over the intricate carvings of the fireplace.

Any amount of symbols could be hidden in the folds and swirls in the detailed patters all over the room. It'd take them all night to thoroughly search the suite, but a small voice in the back of his mind was insisting it most likely wasn't even in the room at all.

"I threatened to tell his wife about his affair with one of the waitresses that works down in Cinderella's Round Table," she answered, her eyes hungrily fixed on Dean.

Sam suddenly straightened. An idea formed in his head, remembering the front of the castle. "You basically have full access to the castle then?"

She shrugged. "Basically." She finally tore her eyes away from Dean to give Sam a suspicious look. "Why?"

"Can we go out onto the balcony?"

He knew it was restricted to the public—even to the guests who won the overnight stay in the suite—so they may as well seize the opportunity that Sally's blackmail offered them.

"You do realize it looks out over Main Street, right?" she asked, raising a cautionary eyebrow. "You can see everyone, and everyone can see you. That means I could very well lose my job, and Mr. Quinn would lose his job too."

Sam and Dean exchanged another look, but Sally tilted her head to one side contemplatively. Then she shrugged and waved her hands.

"Oh, what the hell? Abercrombie just hired me as a model, so I would've quit anyway. Besides, that bastard deserves to be fired—he tried to come onto me. Let's go check out the balcony then! You know that's where Tinkerbell flies down from, right?"

"Fascinating," Sam muttered under his breath as he watched Sally latch an arm around Dean, who only smirked in reply.

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

Her hand closed around Lauren's throat, the pointy stiletto heel of Lauren's own shoe painfully pressed against the redhead's temple. Low-level or not, the woman had quite a collection of souls, and since Tom no longer had an auction, he was going to have to get his souls in whatever ways he could. He'd managed to collect thirty from Victor, twenty-four from Bianca, and thirty-three more from Yesenia. All he needed was thirteen more, and he'd finally be able to return to Disney World and claim his immortality. Lauren's fifty-seven would be more than enough.

Aria's mouth widened into a sweet, innocent smile. "Give me the contracts, Lauren," Tom said earnestly, _kindly_, "or you _know_ what I'm going to do with you."

Fear didn't _flicker_ in the demon's eyes as she scrabbled against the hand around her throat—it _caught like wildfire_. "You wouldn't…"

Aria chuckled. "You know me better than that, sweetheart. I don't make empty threats."

"The Winchesters will get you," Lauren tried, hoping to hit a sensitive spot on the cold demon.

"Oh, I'm sure they will. I know their track records." The smile on Aria's face persisted. "Records that I fully intend on breaking."

"They killed _Azazel _and _Alastair_!" Lauren rasped, clenching her eyes shut as her stiletto heel broke skin and began to leak a small stream of blood down the side of her face. "What makes you think _you're_ any different?!"

"This _body_ makes me _vastly_ different from those two." The stiletto heel creaked with the force of Aria's grip. "I was stabbed with _Ruby's knife_, but look at me now. I'm _perfect_."

Lauren's eyes widened. "Impossible," she breathed in disbelief.

Aria smirked as her grip tightened, her placid smile turning wicked in half a moment. "It's possible. Now _give me the souls_. I'm pressed for time."

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

Sam and Dean stepped out onto the balcony and made quick work of appraising the carvings and general architecture, scanning every quarter of an inch for any sort of symbol. A few park goers had already spotted them and were pointing conspicuously. It was a testament to Dean's maturity that he didn't wave.

But he did wink.

It was Sam, though, who finally peered over the railing and studied the upside-down view of the coat of arms.

"This is getting us nowhere," Dean grumbled under his breath, making sure Sally was out of earshot, too busy texting someone on her little phone. "We can't go through this _entire_ castle with a magnifying glass. We don't even know how big this thing is supposed to be. It could be microscopic, for all we know—like some sort of failsaife Tom made so no one would find it."

Sam reached down and brushed the sides of the balcony that the coat of armor was set against. "We might not have to. Look at this."

Dean came up beside him and leaned over the railing to see the scrapes on either side of the coat of arms. He motioned to shove it, but Sam grabbed his shoulder.

"Wait—the people down there. You want them to see this? A spell like that means the symbol had to have been carved in blood."

"We're not waiting 'til closing hours again, Sam," Dean said flatly. "Hell no."

"I _know_, but we can't just set the damn thing on fire in the middle of the afternoon!"

"Then what do you suggest?!"

"What are you two bitching about over there?" Sally called, slipping her phone back into her pocket and making her way to them.

"Does this crest-thing open up or slide away?" Dean blurted out. He shrugged when Sam shot him a furious glare and punched him in the shoulder.

Sally frowned. "I doubt it. Why?"

They were spared from bullshitting an answer when Dean's phone suddenly rang. He gave Sally a sheepish smile before walking back to the door and answering the call.

"What?" he snapped. It was hot, and that ice cream hadn't been enough for him to deal with the clingy blonde.

"You and Sam are correct," Castiel said. "The symbol is behind the coat of arms you were attempting to push to the side."

"You're _here_?"

"Yes, I'm down in the crowd next to the giant statue of the deformed mouse and Walt Disney. I see Sam and a blonde woman."

Dean had to physically and mentally restrain himself from going to the railing, and flipping Cas and the rest of Disney World the bird. "Okay," he said through gritted teeth instead, "how do you know that's the spot?"

"I can sense the energy buildup originates from that specific area."

Dean reached up to massage the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "And you couldn't have told us this before we walked around this damn castle?"

There was a pause and then: "You didn't call to ask."

Another patented Winchester sigh. "Well, we can't just shove the crest aside and set the damn thing on fire in broad daylight. We need some sort of distraction."

Cas paused once again before asking, "Would freezing time be helpful?"

"_What?!"_

Sam and Sally froze and stared at the frustrated man who looked like he was about to rip his phone apart with his bare fingers.

"I can freeze time, Dean," Castiel said. "I've done it before. I can make it so that you and Sam are the only ones who can move about while everyone else remains in a temporary stasis. That way you can solve this problem without worry of the public eye."

"Do you have any _idea_ how easy that would've made our lives if you'd offered this a long freaking time ago? Jesus, Castiel."

"What does the Son of God have to do with—"

"Just freeze time already!"

Dean snapped the phone shut and turned back to Sam and Sally just in time for the blonde girl to freeze mid-blink. The raucous noise of the park immediately silenced—no screaming kids, no whirring rides, no whimsical background music—_nothing_.

Sam's eyes widened, pulling Ruby's knife from his boot.

"Calm down," Dean said. "Cas froze time."

Sam looked out over the railing, eyeing the people below. Everyone was frozen mid-action—eating, walking, laughing, sneezing, nose-picking, etc. It was surreal.

Well, even more so than normal.

"Come on," Dean prompted. He'd moved Sally up against the wall beside the door before coming back to lean over the railing and motioning for Sam to do the same. "Let's get this over with."

They planted their hands on the left side of the crest and tried to shove it to the right, but when nothing happened, they pulled back.

Dean frowned. "Um, all right. Try pushing to the left."

It didn't budge.

"For the love of God! What—"

The sound of ruffling feathers interrupted Dean when Castiel appeared behind them. "It splits in the middle."

"Thanks," Dean grumbled.

"You're welcome," Castiel replied plainly.

Sam braced his hands on the left side of the crest while Dean did the same on the right. They dug their fingertips in the raised border and pulled. A loud hissing noise accompanied the splitting of the two halves of the coat of arms, revealing a dark symbol painted on the balcony.

Sam turned to the angel. "Would you do the honors?"

"What?"

"Light it up."

The angel nodded once and stepped forward, reaching over the railing and lowering his hand over the symbol. His fingers were less than an inch from the painted symbol when another figure materialized the corner of Sam's eye: Aria, clad in a black corset that pushed her breasts up to her collarbone, skin-tight leather pants, and black thigh-high boots whose heels were thinner than a needle. Castiel frowned in confusion, Dean's eyebrows shot up, and Sam's mouth dropped.

"Aria, what the—"

She smiled good-naturedly and blinked, turning her eyes completely black. "Hi again, Sammy."

"How the hell are you _alive_?!" Dean demanded furiously.

Sam pulled out Ruby's knife again, and Dean yanked his gun out of the waistband of his pants and pointing it at Aria. Or Tom. Whatever.

"I think the question that should be answered should be how you smuggled those weapons of yours in here," Tom said, impressed.

The answer was that they chucked it over the fence and into a bush, paid their way into the park, and then picked their shit up afterward, but Dean replied by cocking the gun and aiming it straight between Aria's eyes.

Tom sighed. "I figured it must've been a perk of having a mutant for a host. That regeneration-thing apparently works for the demon who's possessing it too. Funny how things work like that, huh?"

"That's impossible. Aria was fine when we left her."

"That doesn't mean I wasn't there," Tom answered with a shrug. "I was just…recuperating in the, uh, _dark recesses _of her mind—unbeknownst to her, of course. As soon as I got my wits together and was strong enough to take over again, I did. Luckily, by the time that happened, you were gone, and she was asleep. It was too easy. Don't worry, boys. It was an honest mistake."

"One we will not be making again," Castiel said firmly. He made another move to set the symbol on fire, but Aria stepped forward and pulled a knife from behind her back and poised it right under her chin.

"You do that, and Aria is _dead_. I mean, what's the point of having this body if I'm not going to have the immortality to _keep_ it? Come on, guys. This isn't your fight. Just get out of my way."

"No," Sam stated adamantly.

A single drop of blood trickled down the flat of the blade. "You wanna rethink that answer, kid?"

The muscle in Sam's jaw twitched as he bristled and had to concentrate on not lunging forward and throwing himself at her. "Let her go, Tom. You can find a different body."

Tom pretended to think about it and then shook his head sympathetically. "I don't think so. There's no way you can get out of this little jam, guys. You can't have one or the other—it's all or nothing."

The Winchesters exchanged a glance—an unspoken cue.

"_Come on!_ I haven't even killed anyone!" Tom protested petulantly. "No one's getting hurt—they're just getting _tired_. Besides, Aria's as good as dead, remember?"

"No, she's not," Sam answered acidly.

"Oh, _please_, lover boy. You should hear her right now," Tom scoffed, "railing and shrieking against me as if insulting me would get me out of her body. You know what she said before? She'd rather _die_ than be possessed again, and you know what? I don't blame her."

Sam and Dean stepped closer to Castiel, forming a barrier between Tom and the symbol. Castiel's hand still hovered over the blood-drawn marking, waiting for the moment the blade would drop so he could set it alight. The cut Tom had previously made had already begun to heal, so he dug the knife in deeper, making blood trickle down Aria's neck and between her breasts.

"We really gonna stand here all day?" Tom asked with a sigh. "The longer you stay, the harder I'm gonna push this knife against her throat."

Dean sneered. "Let her go and find another host."

"No."

"Then we'll be standing here all day."

Tom shrugged. "Well, thank goodness I took preventive measures then."

He raised her free hand and snapped her fingers. Over fifty people that had once been frozen were suddenly jolted into movement, and they all looked up to the balcony, giving Sam, Dean, and Castiel full view of their black-eyed stares. They began to converge, making their way toward the castle.

"And you ask us how we got our shit in when you smuggled an entire army?" Dean growled

Tom smiled proudly and shrugged. "Security guard's possessed. See? _You_ don't want to do this, _I_ don't want to do this. So let's _not_. Get your little angel bitch here to fly you back to wherever you were before and leave me to become immortal _in peace_."

Sam's lip curled in anger, and his knuckles turned white with his grip on Ruby's knife. "Over my dead body."

Tom gave him a patronizing smile. "My friends would be more than happy to obli—"

Dean lunged forward faster than anyone ever expected, and he tackled Aria to the ground. He ripped the knife out of her hand and pinned her arms over her head as he simply laid on top of her to keep her from moving. Gunshots rang through the park, blasting off bits and pieces of the balcony.

"Cas, now!" Sam roared, dropping to the floor just as a bullet grazed his shoulder.

The angel, completely unaffected by the bullets that tore through his coat, shirt, and tie, slapped his hand down over the symbol and singed it right off the concrete. Castiel dropped down behind the railing, ducking out of firing range. Tom shrieked in fury as the castle shuddered. Her back arched off the ground, throwing Dean off. Tom scrambled for the knife, but Sam dove for it first. He rammed his fist in her face, and she dropped back down, unconscious. Dean crawled back, pinning her legs down as Sam grabbed a hold of her arms. Bullets continued to tear through the balcony as Sam recited the Exorcism Ritual. Aria's body bucked and thrashed as black smoke poured out of her mouth and shot up into the sky only to descend back to the earth.

"It's going into another park employee!" Castiel called out as he peered between the railing.

The emergency exit suddenly burst under the weight of demons that somehow managed to invade the suite. Castiel shot to his feet to try and hold back the swarm, but when an arm held up a live grenade, it was Aria who grabbed fistfuls of both the Winchesters' shirts and _leaped off the balcony._

Roaring in pain, she unfurled her wings and banked to the left, trying to veer away from the barrage of bullets that tore holes in her wings. A massive explosion shook the castle, the force of the blast sending Sam, Aria, and Dean careening through the air as bits of concrete, fiberglass, and plaster rained down. Castiel's time manipulation unraveled as people started to scream and run away in a panic.

As chaos broke out in Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Castiel materialized in the small copse of trees, gathered up Aria and the two Winchesters, and vanished with them once more.


	6. Whispers and Whiskey

**6  
**_**Whispers and Whiskey**_

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

In the blink of an eye, Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Aria were back in the motel room. The bleeding in Sam's shoulder had stopped, and Dean had managed to scrape by relatively unscathed. It was Aria who managed to nab herself the award of the most injuries. Her wings were riddled with holes, and she had four gunshot wounds: two in the chest, one above her bellybutton, and one more in the leg. Unconscious and barely breathing, she was gently set down on the bed by Castiel after Dean had stripped it of the sheets, which Castiel then used to staunch the excessive bleeding.

"We don't have the supplies to help her," Castiel pointed out unhelpfully. The sheets he was holding down over her wounds were already soaked with her blood.

"She needs a hospital," Dean added darkly, stripping the other bed as well and coming up to her other side.

Aria's eyes snapped open, and her hands shot up to grab both Dean and Castiel by their collars. "No!" she rasped. "No hospitals!"

"You crazy-ass bitch!" Dean growled in frustration. "We didn't save you just so you could die here _again_! You need a hospital!"

"Sam!" she cried.

"The scientists, Dean!" Sam rushed out of the bathroom with the towels slung over his shoulder and the first aid kit open in his hands. "The ones she's been running away from. As soon as she's in the system, they'll show up and get her."

"So are we just supposed to let her bleed out here then?"

The look on Aria's face said "yes." Everyone else's said "no."

"Well, we're _not_!" Dean barked. "Cas, go steal a bottle of whiskey."

The angel vanished, and Sam rushed up to take over, pressing the bloody sheets down again. Dean unbuckled his belt and wrenched it off just as Castiel returned with three bottles of whiskey.

"Better safe than sorry," was his only explanation.

Dean caught one of the bottles Castiel tossed him and twisted it open. He and Sam hoisted Aria up into a sitting position and pressed the bottle to her lips. She gagged at first, choking on the mixture of blood and whiskey in her mouth, but when her eyes landed on the belt in Dean's other hand, she winced, leaned forward, and took several solid gulps that had the Winchesters' eyes shooting up.

"Are you wearing a bra?"

She nearly choked on her last mouthful, staring at him on the verge of tears—whether it be because of the pain in her wounds, the burn of the whiskey, the sheer frustration of the situation, or a combination of all three, no one could tell. _"Why?"_

"You're wearing a _corset_," Dean sighed. "We gotta take it off."

She didn't have enough blood left to blush. "It's just me and the corset here, bro."

"Well," Dean said. "Nothing we haven't seen before." He blinked and frowned warily. "Right?"

"Numbnuts," she croaked, smacking his head weakly.

Dean managed a small chuckle, and Aria smiled a little. Sam went ahead and reached around her back to pull out the straps and ribbons. He gingerly peeled off the bloody corset, careful of her pained reactions, and tossed it on the floor before helping her lay back down on the bed.

"Cas, take out the needle and thread," Dean ordered as he pulled out a pair of forceps and a lighter, which he flicked on and began sterilizing the forceps.

"Just cauterize," Aria commanded. "If you take the time out to sew me up, I'm gonna bleed out from everywhere else you haven't closed up."

Dean pursed his lips. "Cas, get my knife outta my bag and heat it up." Then he clicked off the lighter and kneeled on the floor beside her. He held the belt against her mouth, and she swallowed before chomping down on it. Dean turned to Castiel, who was now holding a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand and a glowing, red-hot knife in the other. Dean reached up to brush Aria's hair from her face. "This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker, okay?"

She nodded feebly, a few stray tears leaking out the corner of her eye. Then she turned to look at Sam, away from where Dean was about to start digging around in her chest. She snaked her fingers in between Sam's and squeezed her eyes shut.

Dean watched his little brother watch the girl between them for a second, and knew this shitstorm of a situation—all of it, from the first time Sam saw her to the moment she walked away from them—was gonna be ingrained in both their minds forever.

He sighed and studied the wound nearest to her heart, and saw the bullet. Thankfully, it was close to the surface, but it was still in deep.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he muttered softly.

As quickly and precisely as he could, he slid the forceps into the wound and clamped it around the bullet. It was slick with blood, and it took him a few tries to finally yank it out. A muffled shriek escaped the belt. She was making a visible effort to restrain herself, but the rigid way she was holding herself wasn't going to last very long. The veins in her neck were straining as she pressed her head down against the pillow. Her heels dug into the mattress as her back slowly arched with every passing second.

"Cas! Knife! Now!"

Another muffled shriek rang through the room when Castiel poured alcohol over the open wound. The shriek continued as Dean pinched the wound shut, and Castiel pressed the flat of the red-hot blade down to seal it. The angel used gauze and medical tape to bandage the first attempt at rudimentary surgery.

"Jesus Christ, they were using a fucking forty-four Magnum!" Dean hissed. "They were shooting a goddamn human bird, not a _bear_!" Then he sighed heavily before poising the forceps over the next wound—the one right between her breasts. _One down, three to go_.

Three more times, Dean dug into her flesh, and each time became progressively harder. Because of her regenerative abilities, the muscles and tendons had begun to heal around the bullets so extraction became even more difficult and painful. When Dean finally reached the one in her leg—the last one—Aria was swimming in and out of consciousness. Unfortunately, that meant she wasn't able to warn them that Tom had, in fact, foregone underwear to fit into the tight leather pants. Sam had to quickly cover her as soon as they _cut off _the leather. She was buck-naked on the bed, giving Castiel and the Winchesters full view of exactly how much blood she'd lost already. She was pale as a corpse and nearly as cold.

"She needs blood," Dean muttered. Sweat dripped down the older Winchester's face as he fumbled with the forceps and a thin stiletto knife he'd needed to use when they realized her wounds were patching itself up faster than he could get the bullets out.

Sam gripped her hand tighter and pressed his palm against her cool forehead. "Come on, Aria. Hold on just a little longer."

"Do I need to steal blood from the hospital?" Castiel asked.

"Transfusions are out of the question," Sam said. "She can't take normal, human blood. She's got nuclei in her blood cells."

"What are we supposed to do if she can't take anything we've got then?" With one last tug, Dean pulled out the last bullet and moved away so Castiel could patch her up.

"She needs water and iron," Castiel answered as he poured the alcohol. The blade hissed against Aria's skin one last time, but the unconscious girl didn't even flinch. "Perhaps even green, leafy vegetables."

Dean blinked and grabbed the whiskey bottle from the bedside table. He took a few sips before heading to the bathroom to wash up. _Green, leafy vegetables…_

Sam reached for a fresh towel and the bottle of alcohol. "Aside from feeding her, there's not much we can do. Just hope she can regenerate blood faster 'cause of the super-healing thing."

"Do you think they've got juice boxes in this dump?" Dean called from the bathroom. "Isn't that what people make you drink if you donate blood?"

Sam began to clean up the excess blood crusted all over Aria's skin. "Yeah, but that's when you a _pint_ of blood. God only knows how much Aria's lost by now. Juice isn't gonna cut it anymore."

"Fine," Dean said, walking back out into the room. "I'm gonna go get some _green, leafy vegetables_ and some meat for the mutant. You two man the fort. If Aria wakes up, make her drink some holy water. The girl's all torn up—make sure she's not possessed again. She might not survive a 'next time.'"

"Hey, ask the receptionist for extra sheets and towels first!" Sam called as Dean headed out the door.

This was gonna be a long night.

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

She came to in that same sketchy motel with the weird water stain on the ceiling. Last time, she'd been in pretty bad shape. That had been painful, but it was at least something she could grit her teeth and snark her way through it. She'd been able to cope.

This time, though, she actually wished those halfwit demons had better aim and had hit her straight between the eyebrows.

She clamped her eyes shut and hissed through her teeth against the white-hot fire that roared across her body—the epicenters being the bloody holes under her left collarbone, on her sternum, under her bellybutton, and on her thigh. Let's not forget the residual burn of the two previous knife wounds on her stomach. At this point, it hurt just to be awake.

She couldn't possibly believe she was still alive after everything, and with the amount of pain she was trying to wade through, she kind of didn't want to _be_ alive anymore.

It took an obscene amount of time to be able to register feeling in her extremities—five minutes of embarrassing tears, ten minutes of moaning, another ten minutes of groaning, two minutes of whimpering, and finally about twenty minutes of deep, steadying breathing—so when she curled her hands into fists, she finally noticed the post-it stuck to her right palm. She assumed Sam wrote it since Dean didn't seem to be the type to write notes. Through the blurry haze of pain and tears, she read:

_Left to canvass Disney. Cas will come by to check up on you. 2 whiskey bottles on bedside table to dull the pain. Don't go overboard. Symbol on door is to ward off evil. Bobby's phone number next to phone. Be back soon._

How nice—abandon her while she was unconscious and recovering from fatal wounds. Imagine if she hadn't been healing right and wound up convulsing on the bed. So much for their hard work.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two whiskey bottles along with a sack of salt on the bedside table. They'd put another salt line around the room, but they'd decided to hell with risks. Symbols etched in either red paint or blood were painted on the walls, over the curtains, on the floor in front of the door, _on _the door, and the ceiling _above_ the door. Motel services were gonna pitch a fit.

As she tested out the limits of her incapacitated state, she tried to remember as much of the past few hours (days—_weeks_?) that she'd been passed out to try and distract herself from the pain. She remembered being force-fed steak, potatoes, and asparagus. She remembered wondering why Cas pointed out that asparagus wasn't exactly _leafy_. She remembered waking up and stifling shrieks of pain when Sam and Dean sat her up to put another shirt on. She remembered almost crying when they had to lift her up to pull on a pair of boxes.

The she was derailed because of the involuntary shudders and cringes of embarrassment at the thought that the two men were dressing her. When she finally got back on track, the last thing she could remember was being force-fed more steak, carrots, broccoli, salad, and chocolate ice cream. But she could not, for the life of her, figure out what day it was anymore. They'd kept the curtains pulled together to shield her from prying eyes, so the only lights she ever saw were artificial.

After a new round of tears, moans, groans, and stifled shrieks, she finally managed to figure out that the only things she could move without significant amounts of pain were her right leg, her right arm, and her head. If she _really_ had to, she could get up, but it was such a long, arduous process that she would rather not have to subject herself to. So if she needed to pee, the bed would have to suffice. Fuck moving.

So she clenched her teeth and heaved herself up into a semi-sitting position against the headboard. White spots blasted the backs of her eyelids, and she took deep breaths that had her sounding like she was in a Lamaze class. Once the burning simmered down to a dull ache, she reached over to the bedside table and grabbed the whiskey and the TV remote. She popped off the cap and took a swig as she turned on the TV.

Aria wasn't a big fan of alcohol. Anything that lowered her inhibitions anything pas the point of simple daring wasn't a good idea for her. The only thing that would ever have her resort to such mind-numbing tactics was exactly the position she was in: gun-fucking-shot wounds. She learned that the hard way. So she decided, _To hell with inhibitions_.

She took another swig and channel surfed. She glazed right over news, family channels, TNT, and porn until she stopped on MTV—right in the middle of an old pop-up video. It was one of those specials, a Top 100-something.

Looks like she found her afternoon entertainment.

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

Dean snorted as he adjusted the huge paper bag of food in his arms and stepped out of the elevator. "Can't believe people fell for that lame-ass excuse," he said.

"Well, _technically_ it was a freak accident," Sam said, shifting the two bags in his own arms.

Dean shot his brother a look. "No, Sammy, it was an accident _involving _freaks."

"It's fitting regardless," Sam said. "What excuse would _you_ have used?"

Dean smirked. "Would've said Universal Studios sabotaged it."

"You're such a shit-disturber."

"Hell yeah, bitch."

"And if—wait." Sam froze, his eyes going wide.

Dean frowned. "What?"

"Don't you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That…that_ music_?"

Dean frowned and glanced up and down the hallway. He cocked his head to one side and listened for a moment. Then his frown vanished. "Please don't tell me that's…"

They moved as one toward the source of the music, their dread growing as they realized they were also getting closer to _their_ room. They stopped at their door and exchanged a horrified glance.

Aria's voice drifted through the door as Dean fumbled with the keycard. _"Should've known better than to cheat a friend and waste the chance that I've been given. So I'm never gonna dance again—the way I danced with you-uu-uu."_

Dean violently shoved the keycard into the slot and twisted the handle, nearly breaking the whole thing. He wrenched the door open so hard it rebounded off the wall with a loud _bang_ that didn't even phase the mutant.

Neither Winchester honestly knew what to expect. So when they saw Aria lying on the bed with her head hanging off the edge, her bare legs propped up against the top of the headboard, and the remote clutched in one hand like a microphone while the other hand gripped the neck of a half-empty bottle, Dean and Sam froze, silently debating what the fuck they were gonna do. Especially since another empty bottle lay on the floor close to where her long, dark hair was brushing the floor.

Oddly enough, the sight was fairly interesting. Some girls didn't need lacy lingerie or a come-hitcher expression. Hell no. An old shirt and a pair of boxers were more than enough.

"Hey, bitches," Aria slurred dreamily. "You wanna join me and George Michael? You just interfutted our 'Careless Whisper' duet."

Sam immediately sprang forward, dropping the bags on the table and crossing the room to push Aria's legs back down and pull her—_his_—shirt up to check her bandages.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," she sing-songed. "Don't forget the foreplay, sweetheart."

Already blushing a furious red, Sam nearly choked on his own spit when she reached up to run her fingers through his hair as he peeled back one of the bandages. He managed to keep his cool as he examined her wounds (which were healing nicely, actually), adjusted the bandages, pulled her shirt down, and then yanked the bottle out of her hand.

"I told you not to overdo it," he said, setting the bottle on the table next to the food.

"Oh, Sammy-Sam-Sam-Sam. You need to _relax_. I'm a mutant, remember?" she said hazily. "I have a different reaction to alcohol than you guys. I don't get drunk as fast as normal humans do, so it didn't really start kicking in until I was about…eight-tenths through with the first bottle, and the pain didn't start numbing 'til now."

Then she cocked her head to the side and stared up at Sam curiously. Then she beckoned him toward her with a nod and a serious expression. He cast a furtive glance to Dean, who only shrugged and started rifling through the bags of food, and then crossed the room back to Aria again. She pulled him down so he sat on the bed next to her head and then reached up to grab his face between her hands and pull him down so he was bent over her.

"You remind me of someone," she stated clearly, narrowing her eyes at him and bringing his face even closer.

Sam's eyebrows shot up. Meanwhile, Dean pinched his lips together to keep from bursting out laughing and tried to busy himself with taking out the Styrofoam containers.

"Who?" Sam asked cautiously, bracing his hands on either side of her shoulders.

She pulled him close enough to bump her nose against the tip of his. "Who what?"

Sam cleared his throat but didn't tug himself out of her grasp. "Who do I remind you of?"

She patted his cheeks and let him go. "A guy I wanna push up against the wall."

Sam clenched his jaw in embarrassment as Dean let out a bark of laughter. He hauled Aria up so that she was sitting against the headboard comfortably and then quickly backed away and headed for the mini-fridge on the other end of the of room.

Dean cleared his throat. "So, Aria, tell us about this guy you wanna push up against the wall."

She seemed to brighten at the prospect of talking about her little crush. "Well, he's so _nice_. I mean, he's got the capafity to be mean as hell, but if it's not called for, he's really, really sweet. And he totally gets me, but I don't think he understands exactly how similar we are. Which is kind of a bad thing anyway."

"What does he, uh, _look_ like?" Dean asked, trying not to smile as Sam glared at him from across the room.

"Well, he's tall, dark, and handsome, of course. Wouldn't have it any other way, but a lot of guys fall under that category so…"

"Well, give us a rough estimate," Dean urged, thoroughly enjoying himself. "Height? Weight?"

In a move that made Sam swallow, she bit her lip contemplatively. "Well, he's about…six-four. I'm not really good at guessing weights, though."

Dean grinned evilly. "Estimate."

She shrugged. "I don't know. I'd have to ask."

The older Winchester very nearly skipped and clicked his heels together. "Go ahead."

"Hey, Sam!" she called out. "How much do you weigh?"

Something thumped against the fridge, making the beers and frozen dinners rattle dangerously. Dean's face broke out into a huge, smug, self-satisfied grin. Sam came back into Aria's line of sight, jaw clenched and face red. He cleared his throat and awkwardly returned her good-natured wave. Dean only made it worse by shooting him an expression that clearly said, "Well, go ahead! Jump her bones!"

Needless to say Sam punched his brother in the arm.

"Where's Cas?" Sam asked, trying to change the subject. "I thought he said he was gonna drop by to check up on things."

"He doesn't have the time to play babysitter," Dean answered, turning his attention back to the food and opening the containers. "He's probably too busy dealing with all the chaos _up there_."

"Cassie? Oh, he came by."

Dean choked on the roasted potato he'd just tossed into his mouth. _"Cassie?!"_

"Yeah, he's such a sweet little thing," she said brightly, licking her lips and folding her arms behind her head contentedly.

"Yeah," Dean agreed hesitantly. "He's our little Tootsie Roll."

"More like straight-up sugar, actually," Aria corrected him matter-of-factly, looking suddenly thoughtful.

Sam's frown pulled closer together in confusion. "What?"

"He tastes like straight-up, _pure_ sugar. Do angels eat sugar straight from the sack or something?"

"_WHAT?!"_ both Winchesters barked simultaneously.

Aria frowned in consternation, blinking blearily. "He—tastes—like—"

"We understand_ what_ he tastes like," Dean interrupted her. "We're wondering _how_ you know that."

Understanding and amusement bloomed across her face as she grinned from ear-to-ear. "Oh, he came by and was being all fussy, asking if I was all right and if I needed to get up or if my legs were numb or whatever. He even asked me if I had to use the bathroom and if I needed help getting there, and he was being so adorably awkward about it that I laughed. He tried to tuck me in, and he almost left without a goodnight-kiss—"

"WHAT?!"

"—so I yanked on his tie since it was hanging right in front of me and kissed him."

Sam and Dean's mouths just dropped. A second later, Dean burst into hysterics and collapsed onto the couch, gasping for air as Sam's lips disappeared into a thin line. He fussed with his hands—shoving them into his pockets, pulling them back out, clenching them into fists, setting them on his hips, crossing them over his chest, rubbing the back of his neck, and finally running them down his face.

"Of course, he knew I was drunk off my ass, so he blushed bright red, croaked out something I couldn't understand, and disappeared," Aria finished, smiling innocently.

"I guess he's not gonna come back here for a little while," Sam muttered as Dean continued laughing in the background.

"Why?" Aria asked, frowning dejectedly. "It's not like I _like him_ like him. I was just curious. Don't tell me you two never wondered what it'd be like to kiss an angel."

Sam suddenly smirked and turned to face his brother. "Well, Dean could've told you—he slept with one."

Dean immediately sobered and glared at Sam. Aria gasped dramatically, her hands shooting up to cover her mouth. "YOU DIDN'T!"

Sam grinned widely, relishing his turn to torture his brother a little. "Yep. Her name was Anna."

"See?!" Aria suddenly blurted out with a drunken grin and chuckle. "Angels taste sweet!"

Dean cleared his throat. "_Anyway_, don't do that again, Aria," he warned as Sam handed her one of the Styrofoam containers and came to sit on the other bed. "He's gonna be all awkward around you now."

"Why?" Aria persisted, setting the open container on her lap and digging into her spaghetti.

Sam winced "He's…had some pretty bad experiences with, uh, _romantic gestures._"

"Romantic gestures?" she echoed, a forkful of pasta inches from her mouth—well, inches too far to the left; she was still drunk, after all. "What does that even mean?"

"Dean took him to a strip club."

That was enough of an explanation for Aria since she and Dean burst into fresh peals of laughter, nearly upsetting the food on her lap.

"And what happened?!" she demanded between gasps.

"H-He p-p-p-pissed the girl off by t-talking about h-h-her dad and s-so-some shit," Dean wheezed between guffaws.

"W-What?!" Aria shrieked with laughter. "Was that some sort o-o-of _defense mechanism_?!"

"The dude chugged almost half a whole glass of beer!" Dean cried. "I thought he would've been fine!"

"At least we now know angels don't procreate," Aria mused trying to pick her food back up but swaying unsteadily.

"What about you?" Dean blurted out before he could stop himself.

"What?!"

"Aria, would you have, like, _actual_ babies?" he asked, totally serious now.

She snorted and almost fed her forkful of pasta to her ear before Sam reached over and put it back in the right direction. "The hell kind of question is _that_?" she asked through a mouthful of food. "What else would I have?"

Dean's jaw twitched. "Eggs?"

Dean was on the floor not half a second after the world spilled from his mouth. Aria had to set her food back on the bedside table as she gasped for air and clutched her wounds while Sam had the misfortune of practically choking on his food. Their laughs eventually subsided, but the rest of dinner passed much in the same manner. Aria was still about two hundred sheets to the wind and came onto Sam a grand total of 24 times. Dean was more than willing to take advantage of her giggly drunkenness to supply her with as many funny anecdotes as he knew.

It was a good night.

It felt good to laugh. Ever since the advent of the Apocalypse and Lucifer's rising, the Winchesters hadn't had much of a good laugh at anything. Especially after what had happened to Ellen and Jo.

As Dean and Aria laughed together, Sam couldn't help but pull away from the conversation a few times as he contemplated the similarities of their lives. The three of them were very familiar with situations where people they cared about died for them, and even with the threat looming over them, Sam wouldn't begrudge their brief respite. They all deserved to laugh now more than ever.

Dean also found his thoughts straying as Sam helped Aria to the bathroom after she'd accidentally walked into the wall instead of through the door. He prided himself on being able to read people very well, and as he watched her, he saw himself—or what he'd looked like while waiting for the day his contract expired and the hellhounds would be tearing into him. He saw the same paradoxical resilient resignation even in spite of her giggles. That haunted shadow under her eyes, at the corners of her mouth, and even in her movements was present, drunk or not. The way she talked about her friends, the funny stories with the loaded underside… She understood she was going down, but she would most definitely go down fighting. But at the same time, she was tired.

This girl had been through _shit_.

So he just kept throwing joke after joke at her, teased Sam mercilessly, and gladly got in a mini-bitch fight with his little brother for her entertainment.

It was with lighter hearts that they all went to bed some three hours later. Dean took the other bed while Sam sprawled out on the futon. It was because the younger Winchester was closer to the sliding door near the back of the room that he heard it slide open quietly at 4 AM.

His hand immediately shot under his pillow and wrapped around the .45 hidden underneath, but when he caught a glimpse of wings in the moonlight, he sat up, tucked the gun in the waistband of his sweatpants, grabbed his shirt, and followed Aria out into the pool area.

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

Night wasn't as much of a cooler reprieve as people would expect. It was the beginnings of a Florida summer; _any _time of the day was hot and humid. That night was no exception. Aria silently stalked toward the edge of the pool, barefoot. Knowing full-well that Sam was right behind her, attempting to hide the gun in the waistband of his sweats, she sat down and dipped her feet in the water. She turned and watched him pull on his shirt, studying the pentagram tattoo that she'd only gotten glimpses of on the brothers' chests before his shirt obscured it from view.

"You look sober," he said, standing next to her as he hiked up his pant legs.

"Yeah, it, uh, wears off after enough food and rest," she answered as he sat down beside her and sighed at the cool water.

He was shocked, to say the least. And obviously jealous. "Not even a little hangover?"

She smirked. "Just a small headache. One of the few perks of being a freak of nature."

"I'd say the super healing and the wings are pretty cool perks too," Sam pointed out with a small smile.

She snorted. "Oh, yeah, _sure_. They just come with a healthy dose of shitty side-effects. Besides, the wings are kind of useless right now."

"What about the rest of you?" he asked.

She patted the half-healed injury on her bare thigh. It was already forming a fugly-but-gnarly purple scar. "A hell of a lot better than before, that's for sure."

His brow creased again as he ran his hands through his hair. "I still can't understand how you managed to stay alive while Dean was working on you. I got that you were healing pretty quickly because your flesh was already reforming around the bullets, but it was nowhere near fast enough to—"

She elbowed him gently and smirked. "Stop trying to figure out my biology. You're just gonna confuse the both of us."

He flashed her a smile before turning to stare at the rippling blue water and leaning back on his hands. Aria glanced at him briefly before mirroring his pose and crossing one leg over the other, surreptitiously watching him out of the corner of her eye. He looked relaxed and content, but she saw the rigidity in his shoulders, the small crease in his forehead, the slightly clenched jaw, the hard set of his mouth…

She couldn't stop herself from asking, "How are _you_, Sam? How are you coping with this whole Apocalypse thing?"

He sighed and seemed to seriously consider his answer. She wondered if he was going to lie to her or accidentally let it all out the way she did. If he did lie to her, she wouldn't hold it against him. Honestly, she wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to hear the gritty details of _this_ particular mission.

"You didn't really tell me much about it," she mused, just to fill the silence. "Just that you two had inadvertently managed to spring Beelzebub himself from his prison."

The crease in his forehead turned into a full-fledged frown again. Whoops.

"You and I really do have a lot more in common that any of us thought, Sammy," she said quietly, reclining her head to stare up at the empty sky. "We both have our pasts. You had your issues with demons, and you know that a spec ops agent—mutant or not—has to have been caught up in some pretty sketchy situations too."

"It's not the same, Aria," he said.

Her eyebrow shot up, waiting for him to continue.

"You left your past in the past," he explained simply.

Her expression dropped into one of disdain. "Sam, if you tell me you're still hooked on that shit—"

"No, no, I don't mean that," he interrupted, straightening and holding his hands up in defense. "I'm done with demon blood. I'm clean. I swear."

Her disdain quickly morphed into worry. "So then what's the problem?"

Grimacing, he pulled one leg out of the water and shifted so that he was facing her. He studied her for a few seconds, as if really gauging if she was ready for the onslaught of information that he dumped on her face a few seconds later. He explained that angels needed vessels to walk the earth so they wouldn't blind humans with their true faces—like Castiel. Vessels were people who were special enough to be born the meat suits of these celestial warriors. Honestly, she thought that sounded more parasitic than ecclesiastical. The two Winchesters themselves were vessels. Dean would be Michael's condom while Sam…

Well, Sam was Lucifer's.

Lucifer.

Like _Satan_. Beelzebub. The Prince of Darkness. _El Diablo_.

And Sam was his vessel. _Sam_.

Sammy.

Sammy Winchester.

_Her_ Sam.

She kept her face rigidly blank with the ease of years of training in front of men and women who'd electrocute her for showing any barely-discernible wince, but _dude._ That was some pretty serious shit, and because of the whole _not-leaving-the-past-in-the-past_ remark, she knew what he was implying.

"Hey," she cut him off, slapping her hand over his mouth to make sure he'd shut the hell up and not piss her off any further by babbling on. "_Dude_, shut up for a second. Sam, I know what you're thinking, okay? That much is obvious. But you need to _stop_. Okay? Understand? Stop."

He ducked away from her hand and held both her wrists away from him. "Aria, you don't understand the parallels of this whole—"

She yanked her hands away from him and punched him in the arm. "Shut up, dumbass! Just because some dipshit infected you with demon blood and just because you happen to be the vessel of the king of fallen angels doesn't mean you're evil. Evil things happening to you isn't the same thing as being evil. You're the one who went to _frickin'_ Stanford, you should know the difference."

This was certainly not helping her headache.

He opened his mouth to argue, but she stopped him again. She knew exactly what was going to come out of his mouth. "Sam, the only reason why Dean was pissed at you is because you act on things. You acted on the fact that you were one of those kids that the Orange-Eyed—"

"Yellow," he corrected her.

She scowled and continued, "—_PURPLE_-Eyed Demon wanted to turn into one of his minions. I got that you wanted to use your powers for good, and it makes sense. I told you that's basically the same reason why I agreed to be a part of my old team, so I get where you were coming from. Circumstances caused you to use your powers under duress because you felt that it was the best course of action, but you shouldn't have. That's why Dean was so pissed."

"But you said it yourself. You understand _why_ I was using those powers. They were there, Aria, and at least I was using them with the right intentions."

"I think I've heard it somewhere that," she feigned contemplation, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

"Oh, so now you're saying I'm heading to hell—"

"You _know_ what I'm talking about, jerkoff. Don't play that card with me."

He snorted scornfully as he moved to get up. "You know, you're sounding more and more like Dean. I got this whole spiel from him; I don't need it from you."

Her hand shot out and grabbed a handful of his sweats, making sure to grab his boxers under there too, and he stopped in the middle of pulling his second leg out of the water.

"Unless you wants me to pants you right now, I suggest you sit that ass back on the ground."

He hesitated, and the waistband of his pants slipped down just a little bit. He glared at her for a second. She wished she didn't, but she couldn't help feeling just a little disappointed when he sat down. To mask her disappointment, though, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him closer.

"No more lies, no more secrets, no more bullshit, okay?" she hissed. "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this for either of our benefits because, frankly, this is the type of thing that needs to be swallowed straight-up." She stared into those hazel-green eyes, knowing he was pissed at her. "There is a difference between _accepting_ something and _embracing_ it. You could have simply accepted the fact that you were infected and disregarded it, but instead you embraced it. You used it to your advantage and even if your intentions were good, it was wrong. The ends don't justify the means, Sam. I learned that the hard way many times. When you do something wrong in the name of the greater good, it changes you…bit by bit. You barely even notice it. The more you do it, the more you change, and the next thing you know, you can't even recognize yourself anymore. Not only that, but the evil you do taints the good you were aiming for—_negates_ it. You're _compromised_. I don't give a rat's ass if you're older or you've seen and experienced more. When it comes to this kind of shit, I'm the fucking _expert._"

By the end of her speech, he looked so damn defeated that she genuinely thought he'd start crying with those big, sad puppy dog eyes. She could read these idiots as easily as the Harry Potter series. Dean was the good son. In spite of the maverick persona he tried to push out, he was the one who did things by the book, the conservative. Sam was…the one who questioned orders, tried to think for himself—the one who'd use the _One Ring_ to try and save the world.

"That's why Dean won't accept Michael. That's why he's afraid you're going to accept Lucifer. You've got a track record, and he's afraid that the moment you give in to your…your _alleged_ destiny, you're gonna give in to Lucifer, and he'll be forced to give in to Michael too."

"So what the hell are you saying I should do?" he asked wearily, looking away from her.

He was _glaring_ at the water now. On impulse, she reached over and patted his cheek so he turned back to her, and she leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth.

"You accept the fact that just because evil things _happen_ to you doesn't mean _you are_ evil yourself," she answered bluntly. "You're a good man, Sam. I can attest to that. If anyone says otherwise, call me up, and I'll come kick some ass."

He smiled and bumped her shoulder with his. "I've already got a protective big brother. I don't need it from you either."

She released his shirt and sat back on her elbows. "You've done a good job protecting me. Time to return the favor, huh?"

"You already did, remember?" he reminded her. "You jumped off that balcony to escape an explosion, only to be gunned down."

"You want me to list how we've been saving each other back and forth? Because I thought all about it while you guys were—"

In a move that she was ashamed to admit didn't see coming, he wrapped one hand around the back of her neck and hauled her up to pull her face to hiss. The kiss was soft and warm at first—the simple press of his lips against hers.

She honestly didn't know how the hell to react at first. Guilt for telling him that she was older than she actually was, shock that he'd actually go for a goddamn mutant freak, and then smugness that he _did _go for a goddamn mutant freak. Then all conscious reactions exploded out the window as he continued to leave soft, lingering kisses, tugging on her upper and lower lips and trying to tease any sort of reaction out of her.

Which certainly worked.

She opened her eyes for a brief second before carding her fingers through his hair and locking their lips together. She sucked on his bottom lip in a way that had him gasping into her mouth. Seizing the opportunity, she slipped her tongue into his mouth, tasting toothpaste and the vague remnants of the chocolate cake they'd had for dessert.

He groaned and wrapped his arms around her waist, hauling her up onto his lap. The heat between her thighs only burned hotter as she grinded down on his erection. His hands seared a trail from the small of her back, up her spine, over her shoulder, and across her collarbone, his forearm resting right between her bare breasts.

Her blood boiled, her skin burned, and she could hear the roar of fire in her ears. But after a few seconds, it started getting uncomfortable.

Like…her blood was _actually boiling._

Something buzzed in the back of her brain as if a mosquito had gotten lodged in the lobes in the back of her skull, and the heat was getting too intense. She broke the kiss, clutching her head and gasping for air, nearly slipping off Sam's lap. He caught her before she hit the ground, but it didn't matter. Fire exploded in her skull, forcing her to clamp her eyes shut against the white-hot heat. The black of her eyelids lightened into blinding white light before fading into a scene that had her stomach roiling.

Shit.


	7. Pizza and Deals

**7  
**_**Pizza and Deals**_

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

She saw the off-white walls, the computer hooked up to some complicated-looking contraptions, the linoleum floor, the medical equipment, those damned clipboards…it was the School. No matter what branch, no matter what country, no matter what _continent_—any conscious mutant knew what the School was, what it looked like, and what certainly happened in it. Therefore it was immediately understood that it would be avoided at all costs.

They didn't just share a mutual apprehension of hospitals because it was like plastering "I'M RIGHT HERE, YOU BITCHES!" on their foreheads for all the scientists that had experimented on a mutant to see; hospitals looked exactly like Schools. Only, you know…they didn't have treadmills, animal cages, and wind tunnels. And they saved lives instead of ruin them on a genetic level.

Aria shuddered. Just the thought of the word itself—capitalized or not—brought back too many memories: the skin-peeling bitch she'd pushed into the propeller of the wind tunnel; the blood-drawing son of a bitch who seemed to genuinely enjoy shoving her into the cage but didn't quite seem to enjoy it as much when _he'd_ been the one crumpled up in there; and don't forget the slave-driving transvestite who'd never let her get off the treadmill—the way Aria had wrapped him/her/it around the treadmill meant _she_ was never getting off either.

To complete the nostalgic scene was a gurney where a boy with—

Fuck.

Shit. Shit, fuck, fuck, damnit, hell, fuck, shit.

She saw dark hair, dark eyes, and dark wings. And then she thought some very, very dark thoughts.

You'd be thinking dark thoughts too if _your little brother_ was in a position like that.

He was restrained to the gurney by more than enough leather straps to hold down the Loch Ness monster. Pale, unconscious, and hooked to an IV drip—that was Aria's little brother, Fang. The little Shirley Temple standing right next to him with a worried, guilty expression on her face must've been Angel then—the youngest. But where was Max and the rest of the flock? How did they end up back in the School? Why was Fang restrained but not Angel?

And who in the ever-loving hell was the dipshit who just walked in? Aria simply assumed he was one of the scientists or assistants since he was wearing one of those typical, godforsaken labcoats. He had a syringe in one hand, and he walked over to the IV to inject it with whatever was in the syringe. He smiled sweetly at Angel, whose glare held the fire and brimstone of hell itself.

Atta girl.

The dipshit walked out of the room but not before throwing one last glance back at Angel and Fang and smiling benevolently. He blinked, and his eyes turned pitch-black. By the expression alone, Aria knew who it was. She'd held that expression on her own face more than enough times.

Tom.

As soon as the name crossed her mind, the scene in front of her sped up like it was being fast-forwarded across her eyes. The screensaver on the computer—which was a blacked-out screen with the date floating around—was spinning and bouncing like a fired bullet in a metal box. She blinked and the scene slowed back to real-time. Another man walked in and spoke to Fang, who'd finally woken up.

Then something started to happen. From the way she and Fang both reacted in the same split-second, she realized that she could feel exactly what he was going through—which, unfortunately, just happened to be an elephant and a whale having sex on his chest. It hurt, she couldn't breathe, and she just wanted to pass out. Angel was screaming, the man was starting to panic, and the heart monitor near Fang's head flat-lined.

Aria's throat dried. Her skull felt like it was trying to constrict around her brain, and her muscles were about to melt off her bones.

No.

No, no, no, no. No.

"COME ON," she wanted to scream at the monitor, but her mouth wouldn't move. "DIASTOLE! SYSTOLE! COME ON!"

No change—still a long flat line and a long sharp note.

The scene fast-forwarded for just a second or two until a girl with blonde-streaked brown hair was bent over Fang's unmoving body as five kids battled security guards that had burst into the room.

It took Aria a few seconds before she recognized the girl next to Fang: Max. She was yanking on his hair and shaking him by his head and shoulders. She screamed and railed at him, and Aria could only imagine what the younger mutant could be shrieking. When Max seemed to have given up, the blonde mutant glanced around and spotted something on the stand holding medical equipment next to Fang's gurney.

Adrenaline.

Despite the deadweight on her chest, Aria brightened. In a split second, Max grabbed the hypodermic needle, whirled, and sank the needle deep into Fang's chest, directly into his heart. She jammed the plunger down, emptying the entire contents. If he had any chance at all, this was it. If that wouldn't save his life, it'd only make sure it was ended.

The flock waited. (Well, Dennis the Menace and older, blind Dennis the Menace whose names always escaped her were trying to yank off a green mutant's head.) Max held Fang's hand and dropped her head onto his chest.

Aria waited.

One minute.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Nothing happened.

Black crept around Aria's vision as time ticked on. The monitor continued to flat-line.

The only clear sentence Aria heard throughout that entire…_nightmare_ were the ones she least wanted to hear:

"We're too late," Max sobbed.

The scene faded into darkness, and Aria opened her eyes to see Sam leaning over her with a panicked expression—that goddamn crease in his forehead. Her head was pounding, her bones felt like lead, and her skin stung like sunburn. The rough surface of the ground were knives against the bare skin of the backs of her legs and arms.

"Aria? Aria, are you okay?"

She winced and felt like crying. Just a little. Eensy-weensy little inclination. She swallowed, and it felt like she was trying to force down an entire Starburst wrapped in sandpaper.

"What happened?" she asked hoarsely as he helped her sit up.

"You blacked out for a minute," he answered, still worried. "Nearly fell into the pool and everything. Are you okay? How do you feel?"

She groaned. "Like I have a legitimate hangover now."

He was too worried to chuckle. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he slowly and gently helped her up to her feet. "Come on. Let's get you back to bed."

As he practically carried her back to the room, she could only think of one thing: 4:18 PM, May 26, 2010. That was the date that had been bouncing around on the computer screen as the heart monitor continued to flat-line. That exact time was precisely twelve hours and fifteen minutes from the exact moment Sam helped her into the room.

She had exactly twelve hours and fifteen minutes to fly across the continental U.S. to Barbieland, California and save her brother. Even if she had Max's supersonic speed (yeah, you could imagine her insanely jealous reaction when Aria had read the email from Fang about that), she wouldn't be able to get there in time. Don't forget the sad reality that she was in freaking Orlando, Florida with eleven bullet holes in her wings. Sure, she could fly, but she wouldn't be able to make it all the way over there.

Even if she somehow managed to get there, how was she supposed to—

CAS! Castiel could teleport her! She'd have to tell Sam and Dean about Fang, but that was hardly a prob—

Shit. Cas was an _angel_. What if he was touchy about that whole _it's-his-time-to-go_ shit? He would not only keep her from going, but he'd most likely made damn well sure that it happens. What the hell was she supposed to do then?!

Damn it.

And she was back to square one. She knew _when_ he'll die and _where_ he'll die, but even with that information, she had no idea_ how_ to get there or _what_ to do if or when she got there.

Fuckin…

Why did her life have to be just a conglomeration of dumbfuckery? It was like the cosmos just gets a crack out of putting her in all these situations and waits with baited breath to find out what she was gonna do. She couldn't even figure out if that little premonition was a mutant or a demon thing. Was it a side effect from having her brain tinkered with or a side effect of being possessed? Like…what the hell?

There was no way she could yank herself out of it this time. No doors to bust down, fists flailing and legs kicking. She had neither the time nor the resources to pull off a miraculous—

_A miraculous save._

In her current circumstances, there was only one thing she could possibly think of that could save his life, and it was one of those "holy-shit-that's-a-_really_-bad-idea" kinds of ideas.

But what other choice did she have?

She couldn't let her little brother die.

Sam sat her down on the sofa bed and went to grab her a glass of water. She picked at the sheets, trying her damndest not to grimace at the railroad of her thoughts. The train had derailed and was now sizzling in a bonfire of cars, wheels, spokes, and whatnot. But this idea. This shitty idea…was the little railway handcar—the one two people pump back and forth like some seesaw to move—that survived and was now making its slow way down the rest of the track.

Sam came back and handed her the water before sitting down beside her. She shot him a grateful smile and guzzled down the entire glass to stall and figure out a way to get the information she needed without being too obvious. She already knew the basics of what she was planning to do, and frankly, it was pretty straightforward anyway. She had the outline; all she needed to do now was flesh it out.

"What happened?" he whispered so as to not wake up Dean, leaning close to her ear.

If he kept talking like that, though, Dean would be waking up 'cause of a whole different set of sounds.

Instinctively, she shifted closer to him so they were hip-to-hip. She leaned into his side, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. As she brainstormed a way to manipulate the conversation, she vaguely (lies, she was totally trying to think through the haze) took note of the fact that she was just the right size for him.

Hm.

Too bad.

"Must've been a new side effect of the lightning storm headaches," she lied effortlessly. "Probably brought on by the possession or the combination of too many wounds and too much whiskey."

"What happens if you're flying and this happens again?"

She snorted. "Under no circumstances would I be flying after drinking egregious amounts of alcohol. I'd be more worried about planes and telephone poles than black-outs."

"Regardless, Aria. I don't know how you manage flying around so much. There are risks of you having those headaches and now you black out? I'm surprised you haven't died already."

She chortled. "Maybe I made a deal with one of your crossroads demons. Sold my soul to make sure I don't die in the air."

His thumb started to rub circles on her hip as he laughed deep in his throat. She could feel it thrumming against the shoulder she had pressed against his side.

She seriously wanted to jump him right then and there. Chalk it up to genetics, stress, and hormones. With a small sigh, she rallied her self control and laced her fingers between his to stop the rubbing.

"Crossroads," she muttered blearily. "Those things freakin' suck."

God, she should be a multi-award winning actress. Her performances would bring audiences to their knees.

"That they do," Sam agreed, sounding totally entertained.

"The hell do they put in those little boxes anyway?" she mused. "Potpourri and a blood donation? Throw in a lock of a first love's hair and some wolfsbane too?"

He couldn't stop the rumbling laugh that made Dean stir, grumble, and then turn over. Aria grinned and stifled her own chuckles as Dean continued to fuss on the bed.

"No," Sam whispered into her hair, "I doubt demons have any need for perfumed dead plants, _anyone's_ hair, and wolfsbane, and on no occasion would I ever condone giving blood to a demon. You just gotta have a picture of yourself, a black cat's bone, yarrow, and some graveyard dirt."

Damn it.

Where in the fruity hell was she supposed to get a black cat's bone? And what is _yarrow_?

"That's it?" she scoffed, purposefully slurring her words sleepily. "I expected some sort of ritual or…"

"Aria, they're demons entrapping people into selling their souls," Sam reminded her blandly. "They're not gonna complicate the process for their willing victims."

She grimaced internally.

This was gonna suck. This was gonna suck on just…_so many different levels._ There was the whole…finding some poor cat whose bone she was gonna have to use, and let's not forget to mention the process of how she was gonna go about taking said bone. Yarrow, she decided, couldn't be that hard to find—just break into some herbal store or something, right? If not…well, she was just gonna have to wing it. And she'd have to take her picture—Jesus Christ help her now. The graveyard dirt wasn't gonna be too bad. It was just dirt, for God's sake. But it all coalesced into a much more _sucky_ fact that she was, in fact, _selling her motherfucking soul._

"What happens when the contract ends?" she blurted out, wrenching herself out of her pathetic thoughts.

He was quiet for a second. Then he answered in a definitely more subdued tone than before. "The person who sold his or her soul is hunted down by hellhounds and killed."

"Hellhounds?"

"Invisible dogs from hell."

"Oh, how nice. What happens after that?"

He looked at her with an expression that made a lead bar materialize right on top of her right lung, making the whole thing deflate and sink down into her spleen. Or liver. Or whatever organ was chilling under her right lung. A second lead bar appeared with his answer: "They go to hell for the rest of eternity."

Fuck.

Well, she'd had enough of this enlightening conversation. As much as she wanted to stall, she wasn't really up for getting the graphic, vivid details of what it meant to be attacked by hellhounds—probably involved a lot of the _tearing-asunder_ kind of adjectives that she was already more than acquainted with.

Yeah. She was totally stalling by this point.

She was about to go grab some graveyard dirt, hit up a pet store to hack apart a black cat to score a bone, have a mini-photo op in a photo booth, raid an herb store for _yarrow_, and then sell her soul to a goddamned demon. Literally. Of _course_ she was gonna stall. This wasn't exactly the milk-and-potting-soil kind of errand run.

But twelve hours wasn't a lot of time, and she wasn't exactly procrastinating with an English paper. It was her brother's life on the line, not a grade.

But if she was going to hell, she'd may as well make the most of things now.

Aria slipped out of Sam's hold to lean back on the sofa bed. She refused to acknowledge his wide-eyed, raised-eyebrow expression as she crawled up to the pillows and settled herself under the blankets.

"Um, what—"

"Relax, Winchester," she mumbled, snuggling into the pillow and drowning in the heady mixture of smells—his shampoo, soap, aftershave, and natural_ Sam _smell that had her shoulders tingling. "I'm not coming on to you. This motel's AC sucks ass. I'm cold, and you're a walking space heater. If you prefer, I could snuggle up to Dean, but you and I both know that I might wind up a lot hotter than I inten—"

He cleared his throat loudly and crawled into the space beside her. Aria grinned and turned onto her side, tucking herself under his arm and resting her head on his shoulder before reaching behind to curve his arm around her back. She pulled his other arm over to rest on her waist and threw one of her legs over his.

"Relax," she whispered, rubbing his forearm reassuringly. "I'm not planning on jumping your bones tonight."

He cleared his throat again, still stiff as a board. "You're just being really…" He had to clear his throat again. "…_forward._"

She chuckled and snuggled closer against his warmth, unfurling her wings so they hung off the side of the bed. "It's four in the morning, Sam. I may as well make the most of my life before I either got shot or malfunction to death."

He took a deep breath and _finally_ relaxed. He hugged her closer, shifting his arm so that he could rub the junction where her wings connected to her back. She moaned appreciatively and felt his breath hitch in his chest. She let herself smirk smugly before closing her eyes and evening out her breath.

"Night, Aria," he breathed against her hair.

She swallowed and hugged him tighter. "Night, Sammy."

* * *

She waited until his breathing slowed and evened out before she attempted to shift out of his arms. She was very much disinclined to leave the bed—as much as any sane human being wouldn't want to jump into a cauldron full of a cannibal's gumbo. She'd found the _perfect_ sleeping partn—_position_. She meant position. Totally meant position. So perfect, in fact, that she had to kick off the sheets 'cause Sam really was a space heater.

When he didn't stir, she finally detached herself from his sleepy embrace, dropped a kiss on his lips, and ninja-ed her way off the bed, into the new clothes they'd bought her, and out of the motel. The most-feared hunters of the supernatural underground and their super-senses were no match for her stealth.

The parking lot outside the motel was empty—no hookers or decapitated men—so she took a running start and leaped into the air. She'd been exercising her wings so it wasn't quite as painful to fly as it could've been, but they were still sore. She'd only be able to do short distances at a time.

Fortunately, everything was nearby.

She found the yarrow and an herb box that would serve as her container for her little crossroads-demon-summoning-box at an herb store that had been a five-minute flight from the motel. (She had to break in, obviously. It was almost five in the morning, and she didn't exactly have the ability to phase through walls.) She'd lifted Dean's wallet with the full intention of never paying him back, so she left the payment for her "purchases" on the counter (plus tax!). She grudgingly locked the door after she left once she saw the picture on the wall displaying the adorable senior citizens who ran the store.

It didn't take her long to find one of those lame-ass photo booths either. It was late, so she decided _to hell with it_ and had a little fun with that. After the machine spat out her stupid-as-fuck pictures, she ripped off the dumbest of them all and tossed it into the herb box. Next came the graveyard. She was putting off the black-cat-bone-retrieval because God knew animal slaughter was somewhere on her Never-Even-Wanted-To-Think-About-Doing List. Howard Cemetery was just down the road from the herb store, so she got a grabbed handful of dirt and apologized to the tombstone for good measure since she felt like a grave robber. She drizzled that shit into the herb box too.

She flew around for almost an hour and a half, taking breaks every five minutes, before she finally found black cat road kill. Completely contradicting past experiences, it had been exceedingly difficult to find road kill—especially if the animal was _black_. She had to poke and prod about ten other poor animals with a stick before she finally found the poor little bastard. One can only imagine her chagrin when it finally sunk in that she had to yank out a _bone_.

Like, _legit_—_detach it from the rest of the mutilated corpse_. If she felt guilty about stealing dirt from a grave, this made her seriously contemplate hitting up a liquor store to calm her nerves enough to do it. Honestly, she couldn't understand why it was bothering her so much. She'd been through a lot worse and hadn't even gagged. So instead of getting smashed again, she armed herself with rubber gloves and a plastic bag she got from the nearest gas station and yanked off a mutilated cat leg. She flew back to the gas station and emerged fifteen minutes later with a clean cat paw bone—soaped and washed about a hundred times. She tossed that into the box and bought a Snickers, a Twix, and a bag of Doritos to calm her nerves.

Because next came the hard part.

If intersections didn't really count as legitimate crossroads (and since she couldn't exactly dig through the asphalt to bury that stupid box during a red light), she was gonna have to go out into the boondocks to find herself some crossroads. She could track _people_, okay? She wasn't an actual GPS that you could plug in something like "Italian restaurant" or "crossroads." She found that herb store, cemetery, photo booth, and cat through sheer dumb luck. As much as she wished it was so, she couldn't just shut her eyes, think of a crossroads, and immediately be tugged in the right direction. So she wound up in some random, hick part of Orlando when she finally found a dirt road that crossed with another that looked good enough to be considered a legitimate crossroads. It was actually a pretty nice spot. She imagined photographers coming and taking dramatic shots of the pretty yellow flowers growing on the sides of the divergent roads and maybe accidentally capturing a deal if he was lucky enough.

She took a deep breath, gripping that little wooden box as the sun peaked over the tips of the trees and glimmered through the gently swaying branches of the dense forest around her.

It looked like a place those Seminole or Pensacola or Yamasee Indians would be hiding and hunting in. She could totally see it too. Pocahontas and John Smith having their secret rendezvous near the tree that looked like Grandmother Willow's oaky, younger cousin.

Only the _real_ Pocahontas and John Smith weren't secret lovers, and Pocahontas died of smallpox.

And there went her little bright note of the morning—flying away in the colors of the wind.

She sighed and rubbed her face tiredly before speaking up at the sky.

"I know that things happen for a reason," she said to whomever was bored enough to listen. "I've lived long enough and been through enough to be able to say that with a hundred-percent certainty. So I had that vision for a reason. I met up with the Winchesters for a reason. I'm malfunctioning for a reason. And the only reason I can think of is that this is all falling into place so I can save him—to see what _could_ happen, to be supplied with the…_occult_ information to help him, and to have the fate that can make this just a bit easier, I guess, right? So I'm gonna ask right now: please make this work. Please let whatever good I've done in this world count for _something—_count for _this_. Make this _work_."

She waited for a sign that the Big Kahuna heard her, but unless His Voice is literally the wind, she got nothing. No warm rush of hope or anything.

Unless the giant whiff of barbecue drifting on a southerly wind was a sign that everything was gonna be all right. Since she had some fairly good experiences with barbecue, she took it.

She used the heel of her boot to scrape out a big enough hole in the middle of the road and set the box inside. Still using her foot, she kicked the dirt back over and the pressed the earth down, compacting it.

She shoved her hands into her pockets and stood there for a good two minutes.

Nothing happened.

No chill, no unnatural breeze, no tingle.

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

"Dean, wake up now!"

Dean's eyes snapped open, his hand unconsciously wrapping around the gun under his pillow and pointing it at Castiel's nose. With a heavy groan, Dean lowered the gun and rubbed his eyes.

"Are you my new alarm clock now or something?! Christ, Cas. You're constantly—"

"Aria made a deal with a demon."

"WHAT THE F—"

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

She'd lived through a lot of traumatic events, and _that_ had ranked pretty high on her list. When she said she didn't play for that field, she wasn't just saying that lightly. She was fine with the people who did, but…that experience scared her off of any sort of curiosity. After kissing guys like Ian and Sam, being kissed by the Barbie of the Underworld was like being raped by a gooey, sticky fish. With leprosy.

When she'd said that the deal had to be sealed with a kiss, Aria had simply expected a firm press of her lips on hers.

Nope…no.

The bitch had gone for some tongue. Actually, a _lot_ of tongue. Too much. _Way too fucking much._ There had been groping involved as well. Apparently not too many mutants make deals, so this opportunistic bitch decided she was gonna have the title of Mutant Rapist. And fearing that the deal would be nullified if she broke the kiss, Aria had had no other choice but to stand there and have her mouth molested.

There had been a niggling of hope in the back of her mind that since the demon had been making deals for God-knows-how-long, she would've been more well-versed in the art of kissing. And, okay, _yes_, there had been some mild curiosity on Aria's part on what it would be like to kiss another woman who knew her way around a game of tonsil hockey, but the two-percent of a sliver of hope just shriveled up, died, and was incinerated.

It was a really bad experience, okay?

She'd gotten up hours before the ass-crack of dawn, left the deliciously-smelling, warm, comfortable, and _perfect_ embrace of one Sam Winchester, and _desecrated the body of a dead cat_…for _that._

Okay, yes, she'd done what she'd set out to do—sold her soul to make sure that syringe of adrenaline would work—but she couldn't even get a little something nice out of it?

So it was while she was dwelling on these pathetic thoughts—trying to thoroughly distract herself from thinking about what she'd just given up—that a familiar, sleek black Chevy Impala pulled up right in front of where she was sprawled out on the side of the crossroads. She vaguely heard the engine shut off and the door creak open and slam shut before:

"What the _hell_?!"

Two hands grabbed fistfuls of her shirt and hauled her up to her feet. She was so out of it that she didn't even react that way she'd been trained to: immediate incapacitation. Vance would've _throttled_ her for that.

Dean shook her a little, his face only two inches from hers. "Aria, what the fuck were you thinking?! Do you even understand what you just got yourself into?!"

She figured her face must've been answer enough because he set her back on the ground and released her shirt. He stepped back and wiped his face, sighing in frustration.

"Jesus Christ," he breathed. Even if it was barely a whisper, his voice was thick with anger and frustration, and she wondered why he was _that_ upset.

Okay, yes, she _understood_, but the degree of his rage was unprecedented.

"What the _hell_, Aria?" he demanded, turning back to her again, eyes flashing. "I've asked that question about three thousand times since we've met you—_what the hell_? Usually it's 'cause of the whole mutant-thing, but now it's 'cause you've just completely lost your fucking mind! What the hell could have possess you…"

She tuned him out as she watched Dean, watched the way he looked at her, the way he gestured, spoke, and _lived_. The big brother with the haunted look in his eyes, the one who'd seen his own personal hell and stayed there for a few nights. The little brother with the hollow look in his eyes, the one who suffered from an agonizing phantom pain he could barely manage to hide.

She recognized that before.

_Agony_.

It was so much more different than normal pain because agony was pain of the heart.

Because there's a certain kind of heartbreak that settles down into a person's bones when someone they love dies. A vicious break-up only bitch-slaps a person's heart and causes a deep muscle bruise. Infidelity is getting poked and jabbed with an ice pick. A person's heart doesn't break until someone dies.

At first, she thought Sam's hollowness was because of Jessica, because of the life he'd gotten gypped out of, and because of all the _shit_ his family had gone through. Aria knew that Jess's death was a sort of catalyst, and that Sam was just _messed up_ after that. Aria also knew that both these boys were still hurting over the loss of their dad—another deal made to save a life—but she could see it still wasn't because of that either.

She knew Sam and Dean were close—exactly like how Vance and Paul had been. As if the word "brother" connoted much more than society ever thought. These were the types of brothers who were all each other had left. These were the brothers who went through hell and back. These were the brothers who couldn't afford to lose the other without losing themselves in the process. It sounded unhealthy and irrational and really, really fucked up, but it was the honest truth. They were the…_ultimate brothers_. No words were sufficient to explain that kind of relationship.

So when that finally sunk in, she didn't need a lot of extra brainpower to figure out why he was so…_angry? Despondent? Disappointed?_ By the time she finally cut him off from his rambling, he'd paced up a small dust storm. "You made a deal."

He stopped and stared at her, and it was answer enough.

"Do you read minds?" he asked quietly.

"Brain waves," she rasped. "But not in the way you think. It's some funky shit none of us could ever figure out."

He sighed and didn't say anything for a few seconds. And then: "Yeah. Yeah, I made a deal."

She covered her face with her hands and took deep breaths before she started crying. "How long do you have?"

"I _had_ a year."

She dropped her hands and stared at him. _"What?"_

"I died two years ago," he answered brokenly. "On Sam's birthday. He—He'd been killed by another one of his demon-blood-brother-bitches. What the hell else was I supposed to do?" He heaved in a shaky breath. "Sold my soul to bring him back, and the bitch only gave me a year. When that was over, I got ripped apart by a couple of hellhounds and dragged down to hell for what felt like…_decades_—which turned out to only be about four months. Then Cas yanked out me out to save the world from the Apocalypse."

Her head spun as she registered the words "I died," "ripped apart," and "decade." Sam dying made the lead bars in her chest transform into solid lead blocks. The passage of time in Hell made her throat tighten and the hair rise on her arms.

Admitting fear meant acknowledging it and giving it power over you. That's what Vance had taught her a long time ago, and it made a hell of a lot of sense. But right now? She was scared shitless. The mental acknowledgement of the prospect of spending eternity in Hell…made her want to cry; she was just so scared.

She didn't want to go to Hell.

She hadn't grown up an atheist, and current events had opened her eyes about the realm of the beyond. She never wanted to go to Hell, and she still hadn't changed about that stance. She didn't want to leave _this_ hell only to land in _the_ Hell.

The cold burn of fear sat down on her lap, wrapped its strong arms around her, and rested its head on her shoulder as Dean continued to stare at whatever progression of emotions played across her face.

"What was it like?" she asked in a small voice.

"Hell?" he choked out.

She nodded and swallowed thickly.

"It was _Hell_, Arai. It's a place I wish I could keep you from." He was pissed. He wasn't screaming and beating her up, but he was _livid_, absolutely furious. His slow, shallow breaths meant he'd tensed all his muscles to keep from doing _something_.

He wanted to know why she did it, that much was obvious. He wanted to know what could have possibly pushed her to that breaking point, and she decided to give it to him:

"My little brother is going to have a heart attack in three hours."

His hands and shoulders just _dropped_ in defeat. He stared at her with a hopeless, saddened, and _sympathetic_ expression, and her tears began to fall.

"Fuck," he whispered.

And then he was wrapped around her, arms around her shoulders, head bent down against hers—as if he was trying to completely cover her, shield her.

"But why a _deal_, sweetheart?" he asked wearily, rubbing her back. "Cas told me you managed to have one of Sam's premonitions by some freakish connection, but out of all the other things you could've done, why the hell did you choose to make a _deal_?"

"I can't fly that far," she muttered against his shoulder, "Not with my wings in this condition. I can't call anyone and ask them for help. Cas wouldn't teleport me 'cause I'm pretty sure he'd force me to sit back and let 'fate' take its course and let my brother die. A deal was the only thing left in my arsenal, Dean…"

Dean just sighed and hugged her tighter. She was shaking so hard he must've thought she was gonna have a seizure, and even though he gripped her tighter and did his best to comfort her, the violent spasms weren't stopping. She just kept rambling on, her voice breaking and cracking.

"I-I'm not pleased about this, Dean. I've got…_three-hundred and sixty-five days_ t-to wallow in my misery. I'm scare outta my _mind_ 'cause I'm—I'm going to fucking _Hell_! B-But at least he's alive, right? And w-with the kind of…of life I'm leading, I-I was gonna die soon anyway, so it hardly even matters, right?"

"Aria—"

"Th-The end of m-my contract and my—my _expiration date_ would p-probably be around the same time anyway! What did I _do_, Dean? I did the e-exact same thing you did. I gave up what was left of my—my _shitty-ass life_ in order to make sure my little brother managed to live a little longer...even if he was gypped out of a good life."

"Okay—_okay_, Aria, I got it," he said, shaking her a little and kissing her temple. "I got it, honey. I got you."

Her arms finally came up and wound around his waist, clutching him tighter as she cried into his shoulder.

"I got you, sweetheart. I got you. I'm right here. We're not going anywhere—me or Sammy. We're here."

* * *

Aria hesitated at the door.

She didn't expect to be standing there again. Honestly, she'd meant to make the deal and haul ass outta town. That had been the preferable route considering now she had to face Sam's reaction. Or rather, his _wrath_.

She'd left him before he'd woken up; Dean had been alerted to the situation and had left when Sam was getting breakfast from the diner across the street. And when Sam had called, demanding to know where everyone had disappeared to, the only answer big brother Winchester gave up was: "Call Cas. And fucking _brace yourself_, man."

In a moment borne out of frustration, hopelessness, and hunger, Dean decided to make a pit stop and buy a large pizza, thinking a full stomach would cushion the blow. But all things considered, this fresh fuck-up of a situation would only result in a painful, bone-cracking splat against asphalt. No amount of cushioning would help.

That's why Aria hesitated. Because this was gonna be a shitstorm.

She pushed open the door and was immediately hauled into a hard, warm chest by a pair of strong arms.

"Cas told you?" Dean asked as he came in and slammed the door shut.

Sam pulled away to hold her at arm's length, checking her over as if she'd gotten hurt again. His jaw ticked as he cupped her face and studied her. "How long do you have?" he asked through his teeth.

She licked her lips and swallowed, glancing briefly at Dean. "A year."

His eyes fell shut when he released her, and he breathed out a long litany of obscenities—some which even _she_ hadn't heard before. He raked his hands through his hair, turning away from her to glare around the room—like he was trying to distract himself from laying into her.

Aria turned to Castiel, who was glaring at her she was surprised she wasn't roasted alive by some sort of angel-stare. "Well, go ahead," she said. "Yell at me."

But instead of screaming at her about the _repercussions of her actions_ or something, he just shook his head. "There's nothing I can say to change what you've done. It was stupid—is that what you want me to say?"

She shrugged. "I'm just waiting for one of you to yell at me like Dean did."

"Aria, we're not..." Sam dropped his hands from his head to his hips. "We're just… We weren't expecting this, okay? Out of everything else you could've done, you went straight to Plan Z here."

"What would've been your idea, Sam?" she asked. She turned back to the angel. "Would you have teleported me to California and helped me save Fang? Or would you have looked me in the eye and told me that fate would have to play out the way it needed to?"

The way Castiel opened and closed his mouth was answer enough.

"Look," she said, pressing her palms together and meeting Sam's eye, "I know I made a shitty decision, but I didn't have a choice."

"There's always a choi—"

She shook her head. "No. There are always _options_, Sam, and those are vastly different from choices. Fang is my little brother, and even though we've never met, I refuse to lose what little family I have left. I was born and raised a fighter, and damn it to hell, but I'm gonna do anything I can to fight to save his life. Are you gonna hold that against me?"

Sam's shoulders slumped. "No. Of course not." He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

"Then don't look at me like that," she said, dropping her hands to her sides and walking to the door.

"Where are you going?" Dean asked.

She swayed for a second, her head swimming even with the solid grip she had on the doorknob. "I'm just… I need some air." Sharing one final look with Sam, she opened the door and walked out."


	8. Kiss and Tells

**8  
**_**Kiss and Tells**_

* * *

**Winchesters**

* * *

"Cas," Dean said, turning to the angel as soon as the door slammed shut behind Aria, "what are you hiding?"

Castiel turned and faced the brothers with a worried expression that had the two men's defenses up again. "We saved her life only for her to throw it away," he said in that dry, bland tone that would've set Aria off if she was there. But Dean and Sam couldn't get mad _for_ her because for all intents and purposes, _yes_, that's exactly what happened. He was right.

"She did it to save her brother," Dean said flipping open the pizza box, grabbing a slice, and slumping onto the couch.

The angel glared. "I don't think any of you fully understand the repercussions of what she's done," he growled in frustration. "I understand why she did it—really, I do—but she's been privy to our world long enough to make a name for herself in it. Her soul has a price as high as both of yours."

"What are you getting at?" Sam asked warily.

"My meaning of 'repercussions' extends far beyond your comprehension. Her intent was noble, but her actions will cause _mayhem_." He shot Dean a brief, pleading look. "Her team—Vance, Paul, and Viola?"

Sam nodded. "They're dead."

"They're safely ensconced in heaven," Castiel said. "They're protected; their souls are intact. We had to make sure of that."

"Why?" Dean asked.

"These are the souls of the damned!" Castiel cried, finally snapping. "Hunters, soldiers, _victims_—people who've lived hell on earth! We bring them to heaven to give them peace, _rest_, because if they go to Hell, they will become the demon equivalent to the upper echelon of angels—the ones just below the archangels. They become human souls so twisted and tortured that they become some of Hell's most revered."

Dean's expression immediately fell as he tossed the pizza back into the box.

"That was how the first seal was broken, remember?" Castiel continued. "When a righteous man sheds blood in hell—Dean. As broken and torn apart as you were, as tortured a victim or a fighter may be, it is their souls that shine brightest, most powerfully, because it was what kept them going in life. It's what kept them living and breathing. _That_ is why they are Hell's most coveted—because there is no greater evil pleasure than to turn something so good into something horrible."

A few second's silence met Castiel's revelation until Dean sighed.

"_Fuck_ just doesn't seem like a good enough cuss word anymore," Sam said.

"You know, all our lives would've been infinitely easier if you just hadn't looked out the window that night, Sammy," Dean sighed, picking up the pizza slice again. Honestly, he wasn't all that hungry, but he figured shoving a slice of pizza into his mouth would keep him from completely losing his shit. Because…_wow_. It'd been a pretty eventful week.

"Why didn't you tell her that?" Sam asked Castiel, who continued to stand there, looking lost.

"She's been through enough," he answered. "There's nothing we can do to change her fate now. Telling her would probably push her into a breakdown."

"There has to be something, though—we can try and break her contract, right?" Sam said. "We can find the demon and—"

"The deal's set," Dean said quietly as he continued to eat his pizza. His neck and shoulders ached from the tense stance he'd had all day, but he just couldn't relax. "This isn't like that other demon we saved that guy from. Aria's little brother'll drop dead if the contract's broken."

An empty beer bottle on the coffee table soared through the air and smashed against the wall and Sam roared in frustration.

"She's fucked," Dean finished, his voice still frighteningly soft.

Castiel suddenly disappeared, no word or warning, but the two men hardly acknowledged it.

"I'm pissed, Sam," Dean said evenly—in spite of the way his hands shook. "I'm pissed that she didn't come to us and thought this was her only choice—even if it _was_. I'm pissed this happened to her. I'm even _more_ pissed that she…fucking _knows_ how I felt now. She's in my goddamn shoes, Sammy."

"I know, Dean. I know."

"I'm fucking _pissed_ outta my _mind_ that I _now_ know exactly how Bobby felt after he found out I made that deal for you. God, I just wanna kill her for doing this 'cause…'cause I thought she was different, you know? She's a-a-a _mutant_. Like…shouldn't she be able to come up with some different kind of government-trained tactic t-to…" He trailed off useless, gesturing madly as if to try and conduct his thoughts back onto the right track. He finally gave up. "You know she can do some freaky mind shit—like read your brain waves or something?"

Sam waved his hand dismissively. "Yeah, Cas told me, but so what? You expected her to come up with some master plan that could bypass the involvement of demons and save the world by herself? Come on, Dean. Even if she's a mutant who can…_read brain waves_, she's got her limits. She's still just a human—hybrid or not."

Dean scrubbed his face with his hands and leaned back in the couch, pizza forgotten. "I just… I just expected more." He sighed and stared up at the ceiling. "You know what the sad part is?"

"What?"

"I'm on her side. Yeah, if I had a different choice, I would've taken it, but if I had to make another deal to save your pathetic ass, I'd do it in a fucking heartbeat."

"I'm not giving up to Lucifer, Dean. Not while we still have any other option."

"Damn well better not."

And that was as close to an _I-love-you_ either Winchester would ever get.

Dean sighed again. "You know she drunk-dialed Bobby, right?"

"You're shitting me."

"Yeah. He called me up, demanding to know who Sam's new crazy, singing girlfriend was."

"She was _singing_?!"

"Yeah, something 'bout the shape of her heart and playing her part or something."

"Do you think she'll remember?"

"If she does, I doubt she'll wanna talk about it."

"We're gonna protect her, right, Dean?"

Dean finally looked away from the ceiling to see his little brother sitting up and staring at him, forehead creased worriedly again.

"We're gonna try."

* * *

**Aria**

* * *

Aria looked up at the bright afternoon sky and scuffed the toe of her shoe against the gravel rooftop. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and checked her watch: 4:19 PM.

"He's alive."

She didn't turn around and acknowledge the angel. She knew he was right. She'd felt the tightness in her chest and the crippling pain shooting up and down her spine to spread to the rest of her bones. Fang had died, but the pain had faded. The adrenaline had worked. He'd died, but he was back.

"He was dead for a few minutes, but the demon interceded when another mutant girl stabbed him with a hypodermic—"

"—syringe of adrenaline," she finished. "I know. I saw it in the…vision." She winced at the word. As if she wasn't enough of a lunatic already.

"Do you understand how you came to have that vision?"

She peered over the edge of the roof at the busy street below. She didn't want to have this conversation, but judging from the fact that Holy Inspector Gadget wasn't leaving, she was gonna have to hack her way through it.

"I thought it was 'cause of the massive amount of brain damage I accumulated over the years," she answered through a sigh. "Then Dean told me you said it was 'cause of Sam, and I pieced most of it together."

"You had that vision because of your close proximity to him," Castiel said. "Your scientifically-engineered abilities coincided with Sam's supernatural powers in addition to your strong exposure to demons."

She stifled an impatient sigh, already anticipating the lecture she was about to get.

"You need to stop lying about how much you know of your own abilities, Aria."

_Called it._

"You said you didn't know much about how it all works, but you do," he insisted, fixing her with a very pointed look.

She winced and stared up at the bright afternoon sky. She'd made it this far from the motel before exhaustion settled and she'd plopped down on the edge of this roof; she'd been sitting there for hours before she could feel a tingling in the back of her neck, a small awareness that Castiel was nearby.

"Is that why you kissed Sam? Your tracking abilities are based on your ability to absorb brain waves at close proximities. Were you fishing for a vision?"

She froze, pursing her lips as she turned to stare at him. "Okay, I know a _lot_, but I'm not one to get into some long, complicated scientific explanation of how much of a giant freak of nature I am. I just…" She sighed and stuffed her hands into her pockets. "I keep things simple, Cas. I'm a simple kind of girl. I kissed Sam for the pure pleasure of kissing Sam. I wasn't expecting to get a _vision_ because I accidentally absorbed residual effects of his powers." She scoffed and laughed bitterly. "I can't even come up with a plausible reason for why I would even want a glimpse of my future because I already knew there wasn't much to see at all. I'm not masochistic enough to be curious of how I'm gonna die."

"What about Terra?"

The world froze for a good nine seconds. Or at least it seemed like it did. White noise exploded in her ears, and her vision blurred and shook in her fury. She clenched her hands into fists to keep from grabbing the angel's collar and pitching him off the side of the building.

"Look, I don't care how much you know about me or anyone else I'm associated with," she growled quietly, fixing Castiel with a stare that made many things abundantly clear to him, "but for as long as _I'm _alive and kicking, _Terra_ will not be seeing the light of day _or_ night. I don't need a vision of the future to see that."

He cocked his head to the side and studied her for a few seconds. "You're afraid of it."

She paused and reached up to scratch her eyebrow. "_Yeah_. I'm scared to hell of it," she said. "I don't know how things are gonna turn out. Don't know if I was even gonna have a happy ending, and if I did, I'd be too scared to lose it in my efforts to achieve it. I didn't know if I was gonna crash and burn, and if I did, I would've probably given up completely 'cause what was the point?"

He frowned. "I think you and I know your ideas of the future aren't as bleak as you say they are."

She chuckled darkly, shaking her head. "You and I are having two different conversations, aren't we?"

"What did she show you?" he asked. "The demon with whom you made the deal?"

It was her turn to look up and stare at him before speaking. "The red-eyed bitch showed me my _supposed _future," she said. "The one I would've had if I hadn't made the deal."

Castiel's brow furrowed, and his lips pursed. It was only a slight variation from his default expression, but the intensity of his eyes made her wonder what was wrong this time.

Even with his shitty people skills, knowing Castiel would stick around to help the Winchesters was a relief. Apocalypse or not, it gave her a modicum of peace to know Sam and Dean had someone to watch their backs since they were too busy saving the world…again. They were going up against _Lucifer_, after all. They might manage to stop the Apocalypse, but their survival wasn't guaranteed. Having an angel on their side just might mean the difference between death and a long, exciting future.

Which brought her to what that molester of a demon had showed her: a blurry image of a little boy with hazel eyes, shaggy hair, Aria's nose, and Sam's dimples.

_Jonathan Vance Winchester_, the bitch had said longingly. _Jonny_.

But Aria had known it was horseshit. She'd gotten thrown around, stabbed, shot, and skewered through the stomach too many times for her uterus to ever be functional. Not to mention the fact that it was highly doubtful she'd ever been fertile to begin with. That little glitch was fixed by the time Max came around.

But that was the funny thing about hope: That shit leaks in through the smallest cracks.

Aria sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, taking a deep breath through her nose. "She was lying, wasn't she?"

"About what?"

"About what she showed me. I know you know. If I hadn't made that deal to save Fang, would I really have…?" She didn't feel the necessity of finishing the sentence, the image of her "son" still lingering in the back of her mind. It was like a new sensation she neither liked nor disliked. It was just…new. "Was it true?"

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his trench coat and looked away. "Yes."

They faced each other for a few seconds before she grinned. "Cas, if your poker face didn't suck, I can hear it in your voice. That demon was full of it."

He gave her a sad look. "What do you want, Aria?"

She could sass him and go, _Why? Can you give it to me?_ But so far, they were having a pretty nice conversation.

"I don't necessarily want _that_ future," she said. "I don't want a son—or, hell, a _kid_ period. Too much complications with my mutated biology and the wings and the fact that his or her dad would probably be pretty screwed up himself since I just seem to go for that kind of guy."

He let her ramble on with a straight face, only prompting her to continue.

"I…I wish I would have a happy ending, though. Everyone wants that, right? I wish I could…fly off into the sunset or…or even stay with the Winchesters," she admitted finally, sighing. "Those two remind me so much of Vance and Paul that I feel like God decided to take pity on me and give me a second chance with them—to fit into a family. I wanna stay with them—demons, wendigos, ghouls, and Apocalypse be damned. I wanna leave it as much as I wanna cut off my own arms and legs—I'll fight, die in a fight, drag a few demons or flesh-eating freaks down with me."

"But what about your brother?" he finally asked, interrupting her babbling.

Aria growled in frustration and wiped her hands down her face, spinning in a circle. "I wanna protect him, but there's only so much I can do! Even if I go to the flock, what am I supposed to do? Be their bodyguard? I know enough about them to know that plan ain't gonna fly. Fang may know that I'm his older sister, but I had to make him promise he wouldn't tell the others."

"Why would you keep that from them?" Castiel asked, worry making his eyes narrow once again.

"Because telling them I'm older means opening up my own backstory to a bunch of kids who have enough to deal with. I told Fang because he's my brother, and even then, I limited the information to things that he could've figured out for himself. Vance, Paul, Viola, Ian, and I managed to close that chapter of history, and having the flock see that would only cause more harm than good."

"So lying to them solves that problem? Alienating your brother by burdening him with that secret won't have severe repercussions in the future?"

"I know shit will hit the fan as soon as they see or hear something that I shouldn't have let slip, but by then, I'll be dead. And our secrets will die with me. Ignorance is bliss, and God knows they haven't had nearly enough bliss in their lives."

"It seems to me that you're genuinely hoping to die before your time, Aria."

She smiled sadly and stepped up to him to link her arm around his and rest her head on his shoulder. He stiffened, but she didn't care anymore. To hell with it. "With nothing to live for and nothing to look forward to, can you blame me?"

He patted her elbow with his free hand awkwardly. "I…apologize for doubting your advances toward Sam."

She flinched and grimaced at his wording.

"If you honestly don't want to leave, maybe you don't have to," he added hesitantly.

She lifted her head off his shoulder to kiss his cheek. "Bullshit."

* * *

Aria quietly slid open the glass sliding doors of the hotel room and crept inside. It was barely 8 PM, but the room was already dark. For a second there, she thought they'd ditched her after finally realizing she was more trouble than she was worth—case in point: THEIR ENTIRE ADVENTURE TOGETHER—but then she spotted the two duffel bags still sitting on the couch. Apparently she misjudged their idiocy. And thanked God for it.

She took a few more steps, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Then she spotted Sam lying on her bed, his legs dangling off the edge as he lay on his back with his hands folded on his stomach, staring at the ceiling.

"You know you're sitting in the dark, right?" she asked. "You didn't go blind or anything?"

He snorted, glancing at her. "No, I just…lost track of time, I guess."

She crossed the room and sat down on the edge beside him, not bothering with the lights. Conserve energy and all that shit, she figured. "Where's your shorter half? He all right?"

Sam sighed. "He's okay. He, uh, went out to meet an old friend he remembered lived nearby."

"Not another case already?"

He chortled. "Not that kind of meeting, Aria."

She frowned, a little confu—she stopped, rolled her eyes, and then shook her head ruefully. "Booty call."

"He didn't say it but indicated as much," Sam said. "Winked and everything as he left."

She looked down at her jeans—another pair that Sam and Dean had bought for her—and stared at her knee. "At least he had the decency to take it somewhere else instead of kicking you out."

"Yeah, he's good like that," Sam said. She heard him shift on the bed to look at her—she could feel his eyes on the side of her face and everything. "Are you talking from experience?"

She laughed and shook her head. "Vance and Paul were never like that. We didn't really have…time for those sorts of shenanigans."

"We have the Apocalypse on our hands, and Dean still has time for shenanigans," Sam pointed out.

"Well, it's less because of time constraints and more along the lines of it not really being our priority. We were still pretty young, and we weren't very sure about our…biological abilities, if you know what I mean." Then she winced. "This conversation went in an entirely unexpected direction."

Sam chuckled again, and she looked down at him. He _really_ was a handsome bastard, and she knew he was very much aware of the fact as well. Asshole. She gingerly laid down beside him, holding back the grimace of pain that seared through her lower torso.

"How're the wounds?" he asked as she made herself comfortable.

"They're almost scars," she said.

"They sore?"

"No."

"Liar."

She turned to glare at him. They were shoulder-to-shoulder, and she seized the opportunity to thump his chest. "They _don't_ hurt."

He scoffed. "They hurt," he said knowingly. "You don't have to lie to me, Aria. You don't have to be a soldier here, you know."

She narrowed her eyes at him and attempted to thump his chest again, but he caught her hand and held on. His chest was firm and warm under her open palm. She made no move to pull her hand away, so he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and held her hand on his chest, still watching her.

"How do you know if I'm lying or not?" she asked accusingly, turning onto her side.

The corners of his mouth turned up into a devious smile. "You have your tells."

He expression dropped into a blank stare. "Enlighten me, you turd."

He grinned and started tracing random patterns over the back of her hand. "If I tell you, you'll just fix it. How would that be beneficial to me?"

She scowled. "They're just lucky guesses, aren't they?"

He smiled. "No."

"Fine," she said. "We'll do a test then—see if that tell of mine is just a fluke or if it's legit."

He chuckled again, shaking his head. She had the strongest urge to bitch-slap that smile off his face, but more than that, she wanted to bitch-slap herself because she _didn't_ want to wipe that smile off. She liked it too much to get rid of it.

"Fine," he agreed. "Let's make a game out of it."

"What's the prize?"

He smirked. "Food."

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

His smirk widened into a full evil smile. "There's a whole chocolate mousse cheesecake Dean got—"

"Okay, fine," she snapped impatiently, her mouth watering at the prospect of holy fucking chocolate mousse cheesecake. Goddamn that Jazz Hands. "Fine, fine, fine. Let's do this shit. What are you gonna do? Ask me questions?"

"Make a statement, and I'll gauge whether or not you're lying to me."

She scowled and propped herself up onto her elbow and poked him with the hand already on his chest. "This is stupid."

He laughed. "Truth."

"No shit."

"No cheesecake, then?"

"I hate you."

"Lie."

What in the fuckering hell? She stared at him, not entirely sure if she should be impressed, furious, or amused. He only dimpled at her in reply.

"I've taken a bite out of a table that tasted like heaven."

"Lie. Blatant, obvious lie. Didn't even need your tell to figure that out."

"Fine. I've taken a bite out of a table that tasted like heaven compared to roasted squirrel."

"Truth. Why were you even taking bites out of treated wood?"

"It wasn't treated. We made the table with our bare hands, Samuel. It was epic."

"Truth. Then why were you taking bites out of it? Were you really that desperate all of a sudden?"

"I got shot with an arrow, and Vance had to pull it out of my back, so I bit down on the table."

"Truth."

"It was better than frog legs."

"The arrow or the table?"

"The table."

"Lie."

Sam's lame-ass game continued—like a reversed true-or-false test that had Aria feeling more self-conscious every time he called her out on her lies. She tried to pay close attention to how she reacted to his questions, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She even went as far as to make up her own tick to see if it would throw him off, but all he did was laugh at her. She finally gave up and let him have his fun. She spewed out random facts and lies that had him chortling, choking, snorting, and nearly falling off the bed. She progressively got closer to him until she was resting her head on his shoulder and his arm was curled around her waist.

"I've run around naked before."

He froze. "Truth? _When_?"

"Viola was out for the count, and we needed a distraction."

"Lie! When?!"

"Paul stole my clothes when I was taking a bath in the river. I had to chase him around the clearing."

Sam snickered. "Truth. And here I was expecting you to have streaked across the football field."

Her grin would've made Satan wet himself in pride. "You're totally imagining me naked now, aren't you?"

"Not like I don't already know what you look like," he said shrewdly.

"Well, I think it's vastly different than seeing me naked covered in blood, you know," she pointed out. "Moving on from my nakedness—I have broken into one of the Egyptian pyramids."

He squeezed her waist, his jaw dropping. "Truth?!"

She nodded proudly, poking his chest again. "I ain't telling you _shit_, son, but that was one hell of a fucking creepy experience."

"But _why_?"

"Ian dared me."

"Lie."

"It was on my bucket list."

He paused again. "Were you drunk when you made that list? The hell were you doing planning to steal from the pyramids?"

She reached back and smacked his leg. "Of course not. I was just planning on visiting them. Breaking in just happened on the fly."

"Did you…actually get anything?"

"No, I _broke_ in. I didn't say I actually _stole_ anything."

He chuckled and stroked the skin of her waist where her shirt had ridden up. The feeling of his warm, calloused fingers had her pressing closer to his side and throwing a leg over his, eyes falling shut as she inhaled the scent of Sam's shampoo and aftershave. Goosebumps instantly sprouted out over her skin, and she shivered. If he didn't notice, he was an idiot.

"I wonder what kind of _The Mummy _-type scenario Ian and I would've gotten wrangled into if I'd decided to pop open a sarcophagus just for curiosity's sake," she muttered absently.

He tensed underneath her. "You actually found a sarcophagus?"

"Well, I had to get in through a different, less-known entrance, of course," she said. "I couldn't just skip in with the guards all around."

"Of course," he muttered under a chuckle. _"Naturally."_

She sighed and moved her hand over his heart. "I like it when it rains."

"Truth." He sounded surprised. Which, you know, made sense. "But the…the thunderstorms and the headaches? I thought you'd hate rain because of that."

"I loved it before the headaches started. Now I just miss it."

His hand rubbed deeper into the skin of her waist; he may as well just pull the shirt off. "Lie."

She didn't know whether to smirk or scowl. How in the hell was he doing it? "I always hated thunderstorms when I was younger. I was a little kid, you know? Little kids—mutant or not—hate thunderstorms. But once the headaches started… You'd think I'd hate them even more, what with them being the harbinger of torture and agony and whatnot," she joked lamely, "but whoever came up with that saying was right—you really don't know what you had until you lost it."

He turned onto his side to face her, moving so her head rested on his bicep and the fronts of their bodies were flush.

"Lie."

She smiled and leaned forward so their foreheads were pressed together. "It means that I'm broken."

He frowned. "I don't get it."

"I like rain because it makes sure that I'm no longer an asset to anybody; I'm a time bomb," she said, eyes on his lips. "They won't be actively trying to recruit me for more stupid-ass missions or some shit like that. What kind of agent nearly dies every time it rains, right?"

He took a deep, steady breath and exhaled slowly. And then he closed the distance between their lips. His kiss was soft, tender—comforting, sympathetic. It was the fire of a hearth that meant home. He let it taper off gently, leaving small pecks on her lips before pulling his head back. He stroked the hair from her face and cupped her cheek. She closed her eyes against the warmth of his hand and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"We're all so fucked up," she said. "You, me, Dean—even Castiel. I'm sure Bobby's messed up too, right?"

"Yeah," he said, "but I guess that's what makes it better, right?"

"The hell are you talking about, Winchester?"

"Would you rather the fate of the world rest on the shoulders of some paragon of good or people who've been and seen it all, who know what they're doing, who're willing to make the hard choices and get their hands dirty for something they believe in?" he asked, stroking her cheek. "You saved Fang because he's your little brother, because you don't want him to suffer at the hands of the people who've been screwing with your lives from the very beginning. Dean and I are trying to save the world because it's what we _do_. It's what we were raised to do, what we know we have to do, and what we choose to do."

She closed her eyes and fisted her hands in his shirt.

"We're all gonna get through this, Aria," he said.

And then she kissed him again, and this time, there would be no separating them.


	9. Iron and Sunsets

**9  
**_**Iron and Sunsets**_

* * *

She woke up to the sensation of gentle, calloused fingertips brushing lines up and down her bare back, occasionally stroking her wings and stroking her hair away from her neck. She lay on her stomach, arms bent and tucked against her chest, hands under her chin. It was still dark in the room, but she knew it was early morning—4:30 AM because no matter what, it was her automatic wake-up time. Years of being wrenched out of bed every day at that hour for training at the School does that sort of thing to a person.

She licked her lips and opened her eyes. Sam smiled at her and leaned forward to kiss her tenderly.

"It's almost sunrise," she muttered after a long yawn.

"You got some innate biological mechanism to tell you that?" he teased.

Aria poked his side and shifted so she straddled his hips. "There's a clock on the bedside table, numbskull." He didn't need to know about her little habit.

He scowled at her and rolled his eyes but got over it quick enough as he stroked her sides, tracing the undersides of her bare breasts with his thumbs. "How are you?"

She leaned down and kissed him. "Peachy."

He grinned and gently flipped them over so that she lay on her back, taking care not to crush her wings. Laying on his side, he pillowed her head with his arm and pulled her body close.

"What did the tattoo artist say when you two got these done?" she asked, reaching up to trace the tattoo etched over his heart with her fingertips.

"He didn't say anything, but we could tell he was trying to decide between Satan worshippers or Satan-worshipping gay lovers."

"I'm sure it was the latter," she said with a smirk. "You and Dean have a disturbingly codependent relationship."

He pinched her thigh, eliciting a yelp and then a chuckle. He rested his hand on her stomach, splaying out his fingers to smooth over her skin. He shifted downward so he could drop kisses right over her diaphragm and then trail his lips down to her more recently-acquired scars, making her clench her teeth and groan.

"Sam, whatever you want…all you needed to do was ask," she murmured, barely able to keep the pathetic whimper out of her voice.

"Cas found Pestilence," he said against her stomach.

Her muscles tensed for an _entirely different_, less-sexual reason. Great pillow talk. Seriously.

"He called Dean a few hours ago, and Dean sent me a text."

She ran her hands through his hair and rubbed his shoulders. "And Pestilence and Death are all that's left of what you need to toss Lucifer back in the cage?"

He nodded, dropped his forehead onto her stomach, and stroked her thighs. "We leave in the morning. Well, a few hours."

"_We_?" she echoed with a small smile. "I'm coming with you guys?"

"You're in no condition to fly to your brother. No, you're _riding_ with us. We'll drop you off wherever you need to go—Arizona, right?"

"Yeah." She combed her fingers through his hair, letting the strands fall back on his forehead. "Yeah, Mesa, Arizona."

"It'll probably be a three day's drive," he said, twisting his head to kiss her open palm.

"Well, then we'd best make the most of those three days, huh?"

And it was easily the best three days of her life.

While that really didn't mean a hell of a lot considering how her life had been going, it meant a lot to her. Because for the first time in two years, she was genuinely happy. Even when Dean woke them up a few hours later, playfully leering at her and winking as he flossed his teeth in the doorway of the bathroom as Sam snapped awake and nearly toppled them off the bed as he tried to frantically cover her up. Even when the last piece of her cheesecake wound up in Dean's face because they'd seriously underestimated how many sexual innuendos he could throw into a conversation in less than five minutes. Even when he blatantly congratulated them both and offered to buy supplemental toys.

Because she wasn't running. She wasn't fighting. Sure, she still had her worries, but for the three days it took them to travel west to Fang and the Flock, she felt lighter than she'd ever been before.

They spent the days in the Impala, singing along to Dean's classic rock, teasing Sam's taste in music, and sharing morbid stories, funny anecdotes, and fighting about movies and TV shows. By nightfall, they would check into a hotel room with _two_ bedrooms, of course. Aria would help them plan for the Apocalypse, joke around, answer their questions about mutants, and tease each other mercilessly over dinner. Then she and Sam would make love until the early hours of the morning, continuing their crash course on each other's anatomy, memorizing each other's map of scars.

Thanks to Aria's impeccable track record of being possessed, the Winchesters agreed a trip to the tattoo parlor would be beneficial for the entire human race, so on the third day, the brothers dragged her out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn and practically carried her into some random, low-key, dubious establishment that wouldn't quibble too much over tattooing random Satanic-looking symbols. So she came back out with an anti-possession tattoo—the same pentagram fused into a sun right over her heart—and a smug smirk caused by the sight of Dean being sexually harassed by the eighty-eight year old grandmother of the tattooist.

The rest of the day was spent lecturing Aria about demonic wards, hex bags, angel-banishing sigils, Latin pronunciation, and how to properly make holy water...because Dean simply assumed her being a mutant meant she was a super-genius who could not only _absorb_ information like a sponge but rather _suck it up_…like a _vacuum. _If the dumb fuck hadn't pulled over under the shade of a giant oak tree, they would've crashed into it because Aria had finally cracked and whacked the older Winchester upside the head for that dumbass assumption.

"You're such an asshole, Jazz Hands," Aria grumbled, shoving Dean's seat forward so that he smacked onto steering wheel.

"Ow!" Dean grunted as she scrambled out the door, taking care to elbow him in the side of the head for her own amusement.

"You got chewed by hellhounds," Aria laughed. "You're all right, you _baby_."

Sam chortled on his way out of the Impala. Dean grumbled as he pushed his seat back and clambered out himself. He popped the trunk, and Sam pulled out a cooler of drinks they'd packed after they hit the tattoo parlor. He tossed Aria a Coke and pulled out two beers for Dean and himself.

She hopped up onto the hood of the Impala, and Sam and Dean leaned on the grill on either side of her.

"You know you can use that as a toilet bowl cleaner?" Dean quipped, motioning to the can in her hand.

"You know that kills your liver and brain cells?" She didn't even look at him. "And your IQ tells me it's doing a great job so far."

Dean shrugged. "It's not like I've got much to lose in this line of work."

She shot him a look. "I haven't got much to lose either."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the color in Sam's face drain a little, and the two-thirds-full beer in his hands went up to his mouth and didn't come back down until it was empty. That effectively ended all conversation for another few minutes until Dean suddenly shifted and pulled something out of his pocket. He held his closed fist out to her.

She raised an eyebrow and fist-bumped him in reply.

Dean just rolled his eyes. "Hold out your _hand_, dumbass."

When she did, he dropped a heavy, wide-band ring into her palm. She studied the dark metal curiously, holding it up against the waning sunlight.

"It's made of iron, so in case you run into a ghost or something, you can...give 'em a hard wallop to the face. It's not gonna get rid of it, but it'll give you some time to get away or grab something more effective," he explained almost sheepishly. "You got the tattoo against demons. This is just for everything else."

She held her empty hand up to touch her heart where her very first tattoo was still under wraps, and then grinned up at him before slipping it onto her right ring finger and pulling his shoulder down so she could kiss him on the cheek.

"Thanks, Jazz Hands."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he muttered darkly, turning a nice shade of pink. He rolled his eyes and slipped an arm around her shoulders. He squeezed her tight and kissed her temple. "You take care of yourself, all right?"

She stopped herself from dropping a "what's the point?" and patted his leg, saying "I'll try my best" instead.

"Call Bobby if you meet up with anything freaky that wasn't engineered in a lab, okay, kid?"

She grimaced at the memory and shook her head a little. "As if that poor man would want to hear from me again."

Sam and Dean laughed.

"You actually remember some of that?" Sam asked.

"Vaguely," she replied. "I'm pretty sure I was singing Backstreet Boys songs to him over the phone."

"You were so drunk off your ass, girly," Dean laughed. "He only had us to blame if he was traumatized by whatever you said or sang to him. Besides…you were freaking hilarious."

Aria punched him in the arm again. _"Do you lay eggs?"_

"It was a legitimate question!" He grinned, hazel-green eyes twinkling in the afternoon sun.

That guaranteed him another punch to the arm, and he groaned, rubbing the new bruise. "What did I say about the punching?!"

Her face broke out in a grin as he pushed off from the hood, walked back around to the trunk, and grabbed another beer out of the cooler as Aria scooted closer to Sam.

"You need to stop slouching," she admonished as he moved to stand between her legs, setting his beer on the hood and resting his hands on her hips. "You're gonna be a hunchback soon enough."

He dimpled at her and shook his head. "I'm gonna miss having you around."

She smirked. "Even in spite of the insane amounts of food and whiskey?"

Sam nodded, still smiling warmly. "_Especially_ the food and whiskey." He threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her in for a long, tender kiss that had her nearly slipping off the hood.

"That silence better not mean you two are getting hot and heavy on my _car_!" Dean barked from behind the trunk, snapping Aria back to the present.

"Shut up, jerk! Get your head outta the gutter!" Sam shot right back, grinning as he dropped his head onto Aria's shoulder.

"Well, then start _talking_, bitch, and I'll know you two aren't messing around up there!"

Aria laughed, massaging her fingernails through his scalp and then kissing his neck. _Damn_, she was gonna miss this. Judging from all Fang's stories, there wasn't really anyone in the flock that had this kind of banter.

"So you think we'll ever see each other again?" Sam asked, obliging his brother's demands for conversation.

Her smile vanished. "Unless I get caught up in another demon auction, I hope to _never_ cross paths with you two boneheads again. Neither do I ever wanna see either of you in Hell."

Sam winced. Aria patted his chest, and he backed off to let her slide off the Impala. They made their way around the car to where Dean was sitting on the edge of the open trunk.

"You taking off?" Dean asked. Then he winced at his own pun.

Aria grinned and nodded. "Yeah, Fang's expecting me."

Dean gestured at Sam and her. "You two gonna start some long-distance thing now?"

She scoffed, and Sam shook his head. "Because that would be a _brilliant_ idea," he said under his breath.

Dean shot Aria another hard look before sighing and slamming the trunk shut. He yanked her into another hug. "Just…don't drink any whiskey without us, okay?"

She was _never_ gonna live that down.

"Call Bobby as soon as you get to wherever it is you're going," he ordered.

"Call _me_ when all this end-of-the-world shit is over. I wanna hear all about it," she ordered right back.

He grinned, and she released him to walk to the shotgun side with Sam. The younger Winchester then gently pushed her against the side of the car and kissed her again.

"Bye," he whispered against her lips.

She grabbed his face between her hands and pressed her forehead against his. "Don't die."

He gave her a sad look before stepping away, opening the door, and then sliding in. She leaned into the open window, resting her arms on the door.

"Take care of each other," she told them seriously as Dean started up the engine. "You see any other winged freaks, _ignore_ them."

"Damn. And I _so_ wanted barbecue."

Aria snatched a penlight off the dash and pelted it at Dean's head, making the two men laugh. She grinned and then stepped away from the Impala. Sam shot her another meaningful look that literally made her reach out and smooth out The Perpetual Crease on his forehead again.

He pushed her hands away. "Make sure you call us before—"

Aria nodded vigorously and poked her head into the car to give him another kiss to shut him up. "I will call you in exactly three hundred and sixty-_one_ days. Go on. I gotta go scare the bejesus outta eight stupid teenagers who're armed with a bag of weed and a lighter that could potentially set the entire forest over there on fire."

"Jesus—what are you talking about?" Dean demanded, craning his neck to peer over to where Aria was pointing. "You and your creepy mutant powers. Go on—go play vigilante then."

He and Sam gave her one last look before Dean shoved the car into gear, and they sped off. Aria watched them drive off for a few more seconds, hearing the radio come on and blare, _"Carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done…"_

She smirked and briefly let her subconscious scold her consciousness as she rubbed the back of her neck. It would only be more people to miss.

"…_lay your weary head to rest. Don't you cry no more."_


End file.
